SHOULD I use Winchester 400 Small Rifle Primers for use in an AR15?

[deadshot2]

If you have a real interest in learning about explosives, and actually handling explosives, there are more than a few ways to get into it, find commercial blasters in your area and talk to them about doing some intern work.

Or just join the Navy and request EOD School. They let you go out an play with Explosives all over the world If you want to blow $h!t up and really make some big Booms, this is a dream job.

They even allow you to play with toys

 

[Gunner3456]

To refine what deadshot said somewhat:

There are really two types of conventional explosions, the type where a container (a pipe) is used to hold back the pressure until it gets high enough to catastrophically rupture the container, (usually by burning, but the same thing applies to say dry ice), and high order explosions, where a blast wave moves through the material and at the shock front the chemical reactions that are converting a solid or liquid explosive directly into high temperature gas.

Gun powder will cause an explosion if set off en masse, however this is a low order explosion and is more consistent with a rapid burning rather than a high order explosion. Despite the fact that smokeless powder is made from the same stuff as more than a few high explosives (NG, nitrocellulose, DDNP, etc) the physical form it's in limits the propagation of shock fronts through the materials preventing a high order explosion.

As was mentioned earlier, ANFO, requires a rather significant detonator, usually a quarter stick of dynamite or semtex to act as a booster to get the explosion to go high order, otherwise you just get a diesel smelling mess.

If you have a real interest in learning about explosives, and actually handling explosives, there are more than a few ways to get into it, find commercial blasters in your area and talk to them about doing some intern work. I've done it, and it can be a hell of a lot of fun. Eventually if you're serious, you should consider an FEL http://www.atf.gov/forms/download/atf-f-5400-13.pdf I had one years ago when I was doing high power rocketry. If you are an infrequent user and don't want to set up a storage magazine, and have a dealer close by, you can just get the "limited" license which is $25/yr and have a day-box. Granted, you have to blow off all the boom you buy (no storage!) but if you need to do some explosive redecoration of a field (removing stumps) it's a legal way to go.

Very interesting, thanks. I think I'll just stick to reloading ammo, LOL. Years ago a neighbor kid was for some reason trying to build a pipe bomb. He had some black pipe threaded on both ends, two threaded caps and had drilled a hole in one cap for a fuse. He put the black powder in, and apparently while screwing on a cap created a spark (static?) and it blew up. He lost both hands and part of an arm, and one eye.

I have a trick now for removing stumps. I take my chainsaw and punch it down into the stump twice. One hole or slit is straight down, the other starts from off to the side, goes down at an angle and intersects the first hole near the bottom. Now I essentially have a rocket stove. If the stump is big I might make two or three of those. Then I pour a lot of diesel on the stump, and even completely fill those holes. I let that soak in overnight and come back and soak and fill it again with diesel. Then I light it. The rocket stove action of those saw cuts really gets a fire going and it burns that stump clear down into the roots.

The way I get diesel started burning is to wad up some newspaper, put diesel in a pump up sprayer, light the newspaper and mist it with diesel. The diesel will catch and then a little more spray and it has caught the stump on fire.

 

[AMProducts]

Unfortunately I didn't join the military before I grew too tall... apparently navy won't take anyone over 6'6"

Instead I have to live vicariously, and instead design weapons for the military... man life is rough