On Sun, 28 Jul 1996, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
The Sunday San Francisco Examiner had an article about how simple it is to make a pipe bomb. It was syndicated from the Dallas Morning News. In the article a "federal bomb expert" opined:
They're probably one of the more common explosive devices that are encountered. That's because the pipe not only provides a container, but fragments into sharapnel." ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Now I don't know what takes to qualify one as a "bomb expert," but the standards must be pretty low. The reason hand grenades look like pineapples is because it's very difficult to get metal to fragment unless it is scored or otherwise predisposed to come apart in little pieces. What I've been told is that a pipe bomb just peals open at it's weakest place and otherwise stays in one piece. Don't know, but that's what I've heard. Makes sense to me.
You're right. A pipe bomb isn't even technically a "bomb". It just has various combustible chemicals within a sealed container. The explosive force is just due to the high pressure released. Nails and screws can be used as shrapnel, but if the container was scored, the explosive force would be weakened. Newer hand grenades have scored wire wrapped around the core so when it explodes, the container is shattered and the wire fragments fly out at very high speeds. I would guess that these are more powerful than the "pineapple" grenades. -- Mark PGP encrypted mail prefered Key fingerprint = d61734f2800486ae6f79bfeb70f95348 http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/