Ok..."Why the burning buildings?" you might ask...

The newly added videos onto YouTube are the continuing efforts of my son to make a movie. It is kind of a long story, but basically after bringing home a miniature building from a school project, father and son quickly saw the necessity to find a way to blow up this building. (OK, call it "male bonding"). But then we thought it would be fun to film the demolition of said building. Well, filming the demolition of the building naturally lead into using that footage for a movie! So we got the idea to make a movie with my son Daniel and a couple of his friends. And then some months ago we did some "Special Effects testing" by seeing if we could rig a model rocket launcher (electronic detonation source) to a sandwich bag full of gun powder to make a realistic flame up or "explosion". If you look at the old YouTube footage, you will see we had some trial and error but finally figured it out and ...Success! So this last weekend we went out (armed with our pyrotechnical knowledge base from out last experiment) performed the actual demolition. This time we combined sandwich bags of smokeless gun powder (current gun powder used for reloading modern firearms) and some black powder (gunpowder used in old muzzle loading firearms- produces more smoke and flame) and strategically taped the sandwich bags and "pellets" of black powder to different places along the back of the building. Then we used a string soaked in charcoal lighter fluid to ensure the flame caught on to all the "explosives". It was really feeling like the prep work for imploding a building! And the results? We have to say we were both pleased! And for those of you who may be concerned about safety (both fire safety and personal safety) we chose a dirt area devoid of brush that could catch fire, had plenty of water and a shovel just in case, and were safely removed from the ignition source. Hence the model rocket launcher- although the wires DID get a little melted! :)
AND a special THANK YOU to our friend Sharilyn for participating with us and helping us to film!!! You made it so much more fun by being there and only laughing at us, and not with us! :) You ROCK Sharilyn!!!