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Comment by chemeril | Hacker News Reader

Yes and no. It's simple enough to construct a shaped charge from things you buy at Home Depot, assuming you have the right explosive. The explosive needs to be conformal (either plastic or castable) and capable of achieving true detonation. Secondaries like C4 and TNT are not easy to synthesize at home, and the primaries that are easy to synthesize at home are difficult to phlegmatize and handle safely at the necessary volumes.

Explosives are terribly fun but please do not try messing with them at home.

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I'd like to mess with them at home, but not at "the necessary volumes" to go through a foot of steel as in the video.

You know those little bang snaps you throw at the ground and they make a popping sound? For DIY, ideally, I'd do things in that kind of volume. I'd probably need a smidgen more, but I wouldn't want to do more than e.g. make a pinhole in 29 gauge sheet metal.

What I'd really love to make -- but I don't think I ever could safely -- is a little 1/8A or 1/4A rocket engine (of the that cost a couple bucks at the local hobby store).

This is science lab with kids, not bomb-making 101.

Small rocket engines can be made with some pyrodex, dowels, and cardboard tubes.

Most high explosives involve nitric acid of decent concentration.

It’s hard to make them in quantities small enough to be actually not dangerous, especially since many of the compounds will react with all sorts of normal everyday substances (like aluminum, copper, etc) to form even more unstable compounds.

Some of them can even explode on exposure to light.

The two are not in the same ballpark. I wouldn’t recommend high explosive synthesis without a solid grounding in organic and inorganic chemistry.

Even a pea sized portion of these compounds can remove a finger or part of a hand, or blind you.

If you still want to know more ‘The Chemistry of Powders and Explosives’ is a good read.

Since I can't edit anymore - ISBN-13 is 978-0913022009, ISBN-10 is 0913022004

Published in '43, so won't have some of the newer exotics, but comprehensive regardless. Sometimes hard to find, but Amazon has new hardcovers for $20. Don't blow your hands off.

Fireworks level explosives are fun and doable at the garage level. I don't think you can do real "shaped charge perpetrators" but you can do some really fun things like explosive welding and such.

I think that's a good starting point. Any good references? I'm looking up the one already given in thread.

I have a lot of experience with medical biohazards, high voltages (>2kV), welding, dangerous tools, handling dangerous liquids (HF and similar), etc. I've never hurt myself. That's enough background to know not to do things before I know how to do them safely.

Another classic: https://archive.org/details/milmanual-tm-31-210-improvised-m...

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