Here's a fun trick for those who don't have any M-80's not to do...

Get a 5 gallon metal bucket and fill with water.  Attach the nonexistent M80 to a heavy weight, don't light it, and don't drop in in the water.

Care to guess what doesn't happen?

The last July 4 I shot with a fireworks company we had 2 12" mortars, one of which had a salute in it.

1200 feet up and you could still feel the concussion.

Dad used to stick the fuse into the side of a cigarette, about 1/2" down from the lit end, and set it down.  5-10 minutes later, Ka-BOOM, and he's nowhere near the explosion.  Always scared the shit out of Mom - especially since he liked to do it at parties with about 30 people there as well.

Can't do that with cigarettes anymore, either.

That's the way you take out a high school locker.  

You can accomplish nearly the same effect with aluminum drink cans, tennis balls, electrical tape,  and a spray bottle of alochol.

come on, out with it I can't find it

Can you still get them at Indian Reservations?   Do they sell to non Natives?       Snakes and Sparklers just don't cut it.  

True dat.

My Grandpa had told me when he was in the service that they used to use the M80's for training exercises. They were placed in bags of flour and used as mock grenades.

This...

M-80s can still be bought, although I don't go hunting them down.  My dad may or may not have used to get brown paper bags filled with them for the 4th, with a couple 1/4 sticks mixed in.  Not sure if they are actually 1/4 stick of dynamite but they were about 2 or 3 times the size of the m-80s and they would rattle the house, and you could certainly feel the concussion in your chest.  Problem with those I hear tough, is that some of the wicks are real bitches..like some of them not lighting at first, then when you lower it to light it again it starts hissing and you almost shit yourself.  If I recall correctly the 1/4 sticks were white and red striped kind of like a candy cane, whereas the m-80s were just red.  And they both had waterproof wicks.   If you think that you can't buy real m-80s any more (even 15 year old kids) you are living under a rock.

Where? do you give arfcom discounts?

Aw man m-80s sure are fun.  Accidently stumbled upon one a few years back when a co-worker gave me a big ole box of commercial fireworks to take home for the Fourth.  It was filled with all sorts of Class C stuff like bottle rockets, fountains, a few roman candles, and this menacing looking thing that was about the size of a large pill bottle, bright red, ends sealed with hot glue with a nice fat waterproof green fuze stickin out.  I knew it was one of the fabled "illegal m-80s"   Took it down to the beach and tossed it into the ocean (lit of course)  the blast was incredible, it sent a plume of water out of the ocean god only knows how high.  The concussion could be heard echoing all the way down the beach.  That thing easily could have taken off an entire arm.  I dont know if it was an actual "m-80" but it certainly was made in someone's basement and was beyond powerful.  Something tells me it was bigger than an M80, it was about 4 inches long with a diameter that was about the same as a silver dollar or so, when you shook it you could hear that it was maybe 2/3 filled with flash powder.

The guy I used to get "ping pong balls" from is serving a long sentence in a federal pen for delivering up over 800 to an undercover state trooper in Chicago. The ping pong balls were roughly the size of a golf ball hollow plastic shell filled with silver flash powder. These things will lift a 55 gal metal drum a few feet off the ground with ease. He also had some the size of a soda can, those would kill you if you were too close!

Ha! Sure does sound like something a bit larger than the classic M-80's I remember, actually, it sounds like someone filled a toilet paper tube with powder and plugged both ends, LOL!

I have never had an experience with m80's.

Aerial mortars, on the other hand, the commercial 1.3g kind that someimes don't explode and can be found in the field the day after the fourth if July - I may or may not know someone who has added an extra long fuse to them then set them off....


Lets just say that it's hard to appreciate the radius of one of those big aerial colored bursts until you can see one go off at ground level (from a safe distance). The real fun times are when you see one of the concussion mortars go off at ground level, the ones that just have a quick flash and then a big boom.

In the 80s i used to buy them.  I think they were something like $35.00 for a samich bag full.  I taped a bolt to one and dropped it in a 55 gallon barrel full of water with no lid.  When it went off it made the bottom of the barrel concave lifting it off the ground about a foot, blew about 1/3 of the water out, and then the barrel fell on its side.  

In the late 70s my brother dug a hole about 4 feet deep im my mom's back yard with a posthole digger for a baskeball goal.  He never got around to finishing the job so he covered the hole with a flexplate from a chevy and spread the dirt on top.  About 10 years latter I found the flex plate by sticking an ice pick in the gound until I hit the flexpate.  I found the hole in the middle and opened it just enough to drop an m80 in the hole.  When it went off it lifted me (about 175 lbs) a few inches off the gournd exposing the flex plate.  I just covered it back up.  I haven't seen an M80 in 20 years.

Never seen that happen in the stairway at school either

I guess none of y'all ever got to hang out at The Hun Farm with Texas Ed...  




Those who had the pleasure know exactly what I'm talking about.

Mailboxes and toilets were not safe

nothing because you don't have an m80, you didn't light it, and you didn't drop it anywhere.