Re: Why a "retired farmer"?
I did that in my teenage pyro phase. A mate started work at a company making interior door handles for cars. As the colours had to match they had a warehouse full of pigments and yes, you guessed it, finely divided Al and ferric oxide. We filled a paint tin with a stoichiometric mixture. However fine powder traps a lot of air and we couldn't remove it - no vacuum pump. Anyway we lit the Mg ribbon & stood well back. Of course the trapped air expanded mightily so we got a magnificent sparkly fire fountain. Then the tin melted and we had molten iron running over the ground from the reaction & the tin. Lots of fun without the tell-tale bangs from other experiments...
Of course we would be arrested for that under anti-terrorism legislation these days. I assume there is a statute of limitations...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
