I can send a picture of "fun" project my son Brian (the engineer) and I (the idea guy) decided to do: I had a GIANT jar of pennies and we were watching a show on the US Mint and the guy was saying how pre-1981 pennies were 95% copper and based on today's copper prices each one was worth, about, four cents. He went on to say that the idea you cannot destroy currency is inaccurate, he said 'you own it and can do whatever you wish" (turns out that is not quite accurate.)

So Brian and I decided to build a back-yard kiln out of fire bricks and other stuff he had laying around (the pic is the kiln in action.) It really works and all the sparks while seeming to allow heat to escape is actually part of the venting process (although my wife Lynn (the Queen) was not totally happy as, for some reason, she did not understand the need to create something that got to 2000 degrees!)

The process is to put charcoal in and use a hair dryer to blow in a lot more air and that gets the kiln up to 1400 degrees and then hook up the blower part of the indoor/outdoor vac to send in more air and crank the temp up to 2000 (copper melts at 1800.)

So my bad "moment": I had everything going perfect and the kiln was up to 1400 so I plug in the big vac and hit the button…………….problem was I was not thinking straight (no, I had not even had one drink as I pushed the button) but I had left the vacuum on “in” and not the blower part that would have made the air go out. Yikes!

For the few seconds it took me to hit the off button it was a real 4th of July show. Damn, 1400 degrees can do a real job on an indoor/outdoor vacuum........but it was pretty amazing and my son and I laughed our ass off after everything was safe.

The experiment has now stopped by order of the Queen.

Submitted on 01/24/2014

Submitted by: Gary Hunt
Reference:

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James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Damn, that was close! Don't you hate those "oops" moments? It certainly was a reasonably sound idea and you seemed to take the necessary precautions, but just the same!!! Funny enough to keep as a PA!! Thanks, Gary!

Candi said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
What James said.

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