The video demonstrates how to make thundercaps, impact-sensitive detonators, using simple materials like match heads and match striker strips. The process involves removing the pyrotechnic mixture from the match heads, scraping the chemical from the matchbox, mixing the powders, and creating detonators using tape. The detonators are tested with an airsoft gun and produce loud bangs. Safety precautions are emphasized due to the reactive nature of the mixture, which can be used similarly to flash powder. The video concludes with a demonstration of the detonators’ effectiveness and encourages viewers to subscribe for future content.
In today's video, I will show you how to make thundercaps, essentially impact-sensitive detonators. They're so sensitive, they can be set off with an airsoft gun. On top of that, they are extremely simple to make, only requiring a box of matches. And I'll show you a super simple method of cooking them. To make this even better, it can even be used in firecrackers, because it's kind of like a mock flash powder. Would you believe me if I told you I got all these matches for free? I wouldn't either. I actually got them for $11. Regardless, I'm going to be showing you how to convert tape and a couple of matchboxes into some impact-sensitive detonators. This is a great project to try if you don't have a lot of time. To start this project, all we're going to need is a box of matches and a razor blade. But if you don't have that, you can use some sandpaper. I'll get into that later. I found this pack of razor blades at Walmart for surprisingly cheap, at about $1.50. Now let's get to work on our project by using the heads of some safety matches. Matches like these are 50% potassium chloride mixed with some other chemicals like glue and cornstarch. There's two easy ways to get off the pyrotechnic mixture, one with a hammer and one with a pair of pliers. Carefully tap the end of the match head while you're rolling it around. This will get rid of most of it. Alternatively, you can opt for a pair of pliers. Just squeeze th…
In today's video, I will show you how to make thundercaps, essentially impact-sensitive detonators. They're so sensitive, they can be set off with an airsoft gun. On top of that, they are extremely simple to make, only requiring a box of matches. And I'll show you a super simple method of cooking them. To make this even better, it can even be used in firecrackers, because it's kind of like a mock flash powder. Would you believe me if I told you I got all these matches for free? I wouldn't either. I actually got them for $11. Regardless, I'm going to be showing you how to convert tape and a couple of matchboxes into some impact-sensitive detonators. This is a great project to try if you don't have a lot of time. To start this project, all we're going to need is a box of matches and a razor blade. But if you don't have that, you can use some sandpaper. I'll get into that later. I found this pack of razor blades at Walmart for surprisingly cheap, at about $1.50. Now let's get to work on our project by using the heads of some safety matches. Matches like these are 50% potassium chloride mixed with some other chemicals like glue and cornstarch. There's two easy ways to get off the pyrotechnic mixture, one with a hammer and one with a pair of pliers. Carefully tap the end of the match head while you're rolling it around. This will get rid of most of it. Alternatively, you can opt for a pair of pliers. Just squeeze the ends of the match like this. As you can see, I'm collecting my match heads on a piece of paper. This is to prevent any unnecessary loss. Powders react much more vigorously when they're ground down. So to do this, just go over your powder with a hammer a couple more times. Now you can see we're left with much more fine powder that's ready to be used. It's time for our second ingredient, which is conveniently found right here on the side of our match box. Take your razor blade and carefully scrape the edges off. Make sure to use the side of your razor blade and not cut into it. Alternatively, you can use sandpaper, but you need to be careful because this method can sometimes get some of the cardboard caught in. This mixture on the side is 50% a chemical I'm not allowed to name because my channel will get taken down. But I already have a dedicated video on my channel on how to remove this, so I'm not going to go into much more depth than just using the razor blade. Now we're going to separate our two powders into separate lines, but make sure you don't mix them together yet. Mixing them together makes it impact sensitive, so we'll be using a cup to do the mixing. Once you're ready to transfer the materials, fold up your paper like this and carefully put it inside of your cup. Now we can carefully shake our cup to mix the ingredients. But I kind of want to see how well we did, so let's go ahead and give this stuff a try. I don't know how loud that shows up on camera, but it's been about three minutes and my ears are still ringing. So that stuff's pretty potent. The recipe we're using is two parts match heads to one part match striker strip. As a general rule of thumb, just make sure this line is about two-thirds as big as the smaller, darker line. This time we'll be using a much smaller mixture just containing two match heads. That's a much more manageable bang. It's about the same loudness as a 22LR. I found that crushing up these match heads can be quite time consuming, so to speed this up, I found a pretty good solution. While it's tedious to obtain, this stuff burns extremely fast, so it might have some applications as a mock flash powder. Like I said earlier, it's actually quite tedious to slowly remove the match heads, so let me show you my idea. Match heads are actually quite soluble, so go ahead and drop a couple of them into water and bring it to a boil. As you can see, after about 30 seconds, the water is already full-world boiling, and our match heads have completely dissolved. Before I continue boiling any more, let's go ahead and remove the wood with some pliers. We're removing the wood that way so when the powder dries up, there won't be any sticking to the edges of the matches. As you can see, our water has acquired a reddish hue, and if I mix it up, even more of the reddish shows through. This is great. This means that all we need to do now is boil the water down to a boil. This is great. This means that all we need to do now is boil the water down to a boil. You need to be careful not to overheat this stuff, otherwise you'll burn your entire mixture. Oh, just like that. Also, it smells like candy. Now scrape off the layer on the bottom of the pan, and you'll have a much faster way to get the tips of our match heads. While producing this way can be much faster for large quantities, a lot of times you end up overcooking it and it all burns away. Now that we've made our mixture, let's go ahead and transfer some of it facing upwards on a piece of tape. Now simply put another piece of tape on the top. Now that we've got this finished, let's go try it out. Now I opted for tape because for two reasons. One, it's a lot cheaper, and it's much more easy to come across. Here I have the Novritsch SSG-10 Sniper Rifle. Let's see how well this thing stands up to our thundercaps. For setup, simply taping it to the back of any hard object should work to be able to make this set off. Unfortunately, I'm kind of a lousy shot with this thing. So let's go ahead and try it on the ground. Alright, there's no way I missed this. Wow, that's really loud. As you can see, that left quite an impression on our piece of tape there. Here I have an extra spicy one loaded up. Let's see how this one does. These cameras can't really do justice to how loud these things actually are. Like I said, these things have a lot of energy and are a lot of fun to play around with. If you do try and make one, make sure to be safe and don't hold anything in your hand. As I said earlier, this stuff is quite reactive and acts a little bit like flash powder. Let's go ahead and load some of this stuff up and test it out. I have no idea what to expect. What's insane is I barely loaded this thing up with anything. It was about one matchbox full of powder and it made that loud of a sound. So we learned yet another thing that we can do with matchboxes. If you guys have any future ideas for videos, please let me know. And also, don't forget to subscribe to my new outdoors channel because I'm about to post a super cool video on that soon.