Wile-E-Coyote buys the ACME model that has a few feature not in this one: things like delayed activation and a plunger that can be operated by the weight of a bird.

If I didn't forget the thin at the ranch last time I was there I would have beaten you to this video by a week. I'm finding out about your video thanks to my patrons reacting to the video I just published there. Any way, I'll link to your video in the description when it goes public.

"I wonder how many people buy these as novelties and occasionally ram the plunger down without realizing that these, very briefly, at the end of the travel become live at a modestly high voltage?" Now that a good question to ask!

Cody's Lab has a slightly more modern version of the plunger blaster. He definitely used one in his april fools video this year, where you can hear the whir noise under no load.

Clive, The fireworks company that I work for have one that we use for first sequence on things like wedding show's (bride and groom push it). The one that we have has put out over 1kV before we blew the cheap meter that we had connected to it. It is crazy how reliable it is considering all we do is once in a blue moon spray a bit of WD over the internals.

Dupont brand is good but ACME delivers to the desert.

This reminds me of the old Olsen Banden movies I watched as a kid, when the character Dynamit Harry was roped in to do some blasting. For those of you outside Norway or Denmark (norwegian version was the best!), the Olsen Banden movies was a series of films about a group of criminals (1960-1970s variety) trying to pull off massive heists. Im talking safe cracking, timing their movements to the symphony orchestra, everything timed down to the last second stuff. What always amused me is that Dynamit Harry was kind of a oposite of himself; he LOVED setting off massive explosions, wether they were legal or not, but he always forgot when they were illegal, and caught himself halfway through the "Fire in the hole" cry. (Varsky her, og alt det der) This has been a test of the Scandinavian Blast From the Past System.

surely you could have tested the voltage by attaching a photo of a meter to the outputs. and it wouldn't matter if you damaged the meter because you can always print another.

Many years ago, probably in the late 1950's my cousin and I were playing in the barn on our farm, we went into the tack room where the old harness and other leather goods hung about on the walls, and under a pile of old scrap leather used in the old days to repair leather for the horses, we found one of these devices. Now we had no electricity on the farm, but dad had a wind charger that he used to charge up some old glass battery cells which he used to charge the 6 volt batteries on our old cars and trucks. He also had a light bulb above his workbench in the garage that would still light if the batteries were charged up, which they usually were since this was on the Dakota Prairie where the wind always blows one way or another. So we decided we would take dad's bulb out of his shop light and wire it up to that plunger thing, this after we both nearly wore ourselves out blowing imaginary charges of blasting powder and such, when you are 8 or 9 years old your imagination can do wonderful things, much better then todays video games. So we hooked dad's light bulb up using an old fixture he had laying on the bench, I think it was meant to be a replacement for his main light should the need ever arise. Well now that handle didn't seem to care much about the bulb, it went down just like it had in play, until it was nearly at the bottom, when suddenly that bulb lit up so brightly it nearly blinded us, then shattered. Well we put everything back, but there were no spare bulbs in the garage, so cutting our fingers several times, we removed that shattered bulb and hung it over dad's workbench. Dad was not very understanding when he returned to the garage for some tools and saw his bulb. Neither of us would own up to breaking it, and as it was back then, neither of us sat down for awhile after dad's razor strop had finished with our bottoms. Light bulbs cost money, and so does whiskey, when we infringed on dad's whiskey money there was indeed hell to pay!

I actually have one of these somewhere. You are spot on with your summary. Back when I was a kid, I hooked a 100W light bulb to it and it lit the bulb brightly for an instant! I would not recommend touching the leads when plunged. It does take some force to get it going but it gets easier once in motion. I will look for it and if found, I will send you some video and better pics.

Please rework the bubble blowing fish to fire pyrotechnic charges. Also maybe paint it pink while you're at it?

Back in 1959 Dad put our farm in the "Soil Bank" a program where the government paid farmers not to plant crops or run cattle on their land. The payments were not enough to live on but a nice supplement for not doing anything at all. So it was that Dad rented another farm to continue his chosen profession. That farm was only about 10 miles away from the homestead, but was much closer to town where my eldest sister had to enroll in high school. At any rate, when I began exploring the new farm, I found that like most old farms of that time there was a nice, well stocked tack room in the barn, a place where all the leather tackle that was used to harness the horses to wagons, and implements was stored. Under, what seemed to be, tons of old leather straps and such, I found one of those old devices. For an 8 year old boy, that was indeed a joy to behold. We had just got our first Television, since this farm, unlike our old homestead, had electricity! I had seen those cartoons, so I knew instantly what it was. It only took me about a week to get bored with just pumping that handle up and down, so I tore her apart. If my memory serves, the one I found was quite different inside, with more gears and such, and the generator was more like one out of an old crank telephone, another item I found in the tack room. I recovered the magnets out of both devices, and a year or so later when dad would let me take the .22 out shooting, I used the box from the device as a target. The things you do in your youth sometimes leave you wondering why you never had more respect for such property, but I guess in my youth, I thought that anything that was part of that farm was ours.

I've been watching this channel long enough to not be surprised by the bubble blowing fish :)

In central Pennsylvania (Scranton area) these *"DuPont Boxes"* are occasionally found at yard sales, and once in awhile people try to sell old Dynamite and blasting caps - old explosives are very unstable . The area had been an anthracite hard-coal mining area for a long time. From around 1880 - c.1938 *many* neighbors had small mine shafts in their back yards, it tapered off after WWII. They would dig a shaft in their yards until they hopefully hit coal, as part of the process they needed to blast through rock. The limiting factors in blasting were the cost of Dynamite bought at local stores (or stolen from work) and the many hours of labor using a manual star-drill to hammer through rock for blast holes [I can't swing a sledge hammer for a full day]. The coal was mined, cracked and screened in the yards and later stored in the coal bins in the cellars. The coal allowed them to heat their stove for cooking, heat the hot water coal boiler 5 U.S. gallons (~25Liters) and power the heating stove(s) in winter (remember, no central heating). Up until 1938 blasting caps and Dynamite could be bought by any adult or responsible child at many stores. Even Sears Roebuck & Co. sold explosives in their mail order catalogue. Most people knew enough to store it outside in small sheds in the yard, children were told at an early age not to play with Dynamite or blasting caps, of course there were kids blowing stuff up - the parents complaint was the cost of the explosives. *BTW: there weren't ANY warning labels on Dynamite boxes or blasting cap boxes.* A single blasting cap will blow off a person's hand, cause eye injury and hearing loss. Adults and children learned not to touch the contacts on the DuPont Boxes, I wonder how they knew? In 1938 laws were pasted to limit sales of explosives including Dynamite, many existing users were 'grandfathered' in, the licenses also allows you to purchase really great (expensive) fireworks of all types. The biggest problem with explosives in the area today are Federal regulations about transport of hazardous materials. Today, ammonium nitrate/fuel oil mixture explosives detonated by a blasting cap are much cheaper for most applications.

Very nice Heritage "appliance"! The sort of thing that would make a nice Winter project, and (with suitably engraved brass plates), a very attractive centrepiece.

When I was young I had a holiday working for a motor manufacturer who also made these blasting machines. The wooden box was very sturdy and when fully assembled had a significant weight.

Cody of 'Cody's Lab' uses a very old one of these to set off charges in his little mine. He'd very probably know the voltage across the terminals.

I am surprised you have not built one yet. My work as a Mechanical Engineer mostly on power transmission installations found me mostly working on gearboxes in industrial/military facilities. Rack and pinion, hypocycloidal, worm gears, spiroidal gears, et al were fascinating and a great deal of fine craftsmanship went into most industrial gearboxes. Military work was fantastic as I was the guy that had to find and fix the faults in the field, quite literally sometimes. The work up at a famous Scottish Naval Submarine Base was by far the most taxing and rewarding. Sorry if I ramble I am an Engineer with a passion for Engineering.

As a young kid, I used to play with one of these things. Dad had an old Atlas blaster (from a previous job doing well drilling) . One time, I somehow managed to cross the terminals with my hand while pressing the plunger, all i can say is that I got the shock of my life! It seemed worse than a shock from the outlet, so I have a feeling the voltage is higher than 120v. Good times, lol. Great video, Clive .

This was a big childhood question of mine and It makes total sense. I was chatting with a Friend last night how I believe everyone should have a basic understanding on how electricity generally works. He for one is very bright however knows practically nothing about electricity and Its scary! I send him your videos now and then :)

Building your own replica of this from scratch seems like a good summer project, the trickiest part would probably be to rewind a motor to become a suitably high voltage dynamo!

Have you at last found something where you can't buy a cheap Chinese clone on ebay?

Not only cool because I've seen it explained now, but doubly so due to the pics of the old original hardware! Just wonderful!

That reminds me of when I was a school kid of about 12 or 13. I had a magneto from an old TVO tractor onto which I fitted the crank handle from a wheel brace. Used it to set of all sorts of things from treacle tins with a bit of petrol and a spark plug in the lid to home made black powder and nitro cellulose, I used a long length of old army telephone wire which never broke down on the insulation despite having something like 10,000 volts on it.

it's very firm at the top and gets easier as you go exactly how your imagine. it's very satisfying.

I am making my own right now with wooden gears and a universal motor that I got from a washing machine, the shunt winding configuration is extremely smart. I will upload a video of it and comment when it's finished

Meep Meep :D

Works very much like I suspected. Still quite fascinating to see. Now I want one.

You should ask Cody's Lab, he uses one for his mining project

G'day, Yay Team ! My father was hoping for a Dynamo like that thing has in it, when he aquired a WW-2 vintage Australian Army Surplus version of a Blasting-Box ; manufactured in Aluminium, but when opened it up it has a long Generator with big fixed Magnets fitted into the Cast Monoblock-Housing, all driven by a Rack on the Plunger & a Ratcheted Pinion on the Armature - but without any secondary set of Step-Up Gears. The Plunger-Handle is detatchable, with the Plunger retracted, and it then fits as a Carrying-Handle into another connection-point atop the Centre of Gravity of the Box (which "lays down" in use, rather than "standing up" like the one in this video)... The whole thing is quite heavy and chunky, painted Olive-Green. My son has it in his Office as a Doorstop, he did tell me what voltage it produced, but I can't precisely recall what it was - something like 24 or 28 volts seems about right though, it wasn't anything startlingly high... Have a good one, ;-p Ciao !

Love it. You had me at Wile-E-Coyote, holy crap, I love that I can learn about how stuff like this works without directly being put on some government watch list for looking up explosive related devices on ebay lol. I bet you're right though I bet that thing would be VERY difficult to get through customs and the Royal Mail service. There are probably trace levels of explosive chemicals on the wood. But I agree, how cool would it be to own a piece of history like that. On a note of owning historic items, I have a very old test equipment back at my mother's house in Pittsburgh that would cost a fortune to ship to my house in Oregon 2200 miles away because it weighs a ton. Transformers inside it are huge. It was a sort of hang on the wall volt and amp meter. I really hope she never throws it away because I eventually want to have it shipped. I think I'll send you some pictures I took maybe you can do a video on something similar if you can find information on it, or you can just enjoy the dusty history.

Clive I love the fact you made this video, you know how to enjoy life and the so called "little things"... Well done, mate.

So, this is a dynamo, for dynamite!

Anyone else thinks that the voice of this guy is very relaxing ?. Good vids of course.

Clive, just how much printer ink do you go through making visuals for your videos?

I think bigclive is definitely going to end up on a 'watch list' if you aren't already there!!!

Big Clive must be on so many watch list's by now with all those eBay searches for detonators and random electronics. Big Clive vs. big brother.

Tupper Lake, NY is a small town in the Adirondack Mountains. I live in the next town over, this thing is literally 20 minutes from my door. This is such a remote, and rural area, it seems like an almost impossible coincidence that it would end up in one of my favorite KZfaqrs videos. Eh, small world.

"It wouldn't look anything like this" I don't believe it.

Always wondered how these worked. The way I imagined was fairly close except for the contact switch at the bottom. There's a whole new series of vids here, 'how classic cartoon items really work'. Next week, Acme rocket sled!

CodysLab could check that for us... maybe you can get in touch with him :) He has a dupont blast generator and he already used it in his mine project to blast some holes

I kind of figured it was a kinetic device of some sort but I never really realized that yes of course it would still be live if you had nothing attached to the connections. Kind of a scary thought, especially if you noticed how black the wood is around the leads on the inside of the box. Great video!

I like the way the picture looks as if there is a strange device, under Clive's bench. 05:48 and pause.

I have one like this (but different) It came from the USA and cost $100 in postage. It works as a magneto with a break contact at the bottom of the stroke and this put's a magneto type sparky voltage across the two bolts. Over 100 years old, original software, still works.

And it works best if it says 'ACME' on the side! Thanks, Clive. Simple, reliable, and not too easy to set off accidentally, as is required when working with explosives. Those explorers need quite a firm push to make operate.

I recently bought a Dupont Number 2 blasting machine. It doesn't have the high gear ratio, it's quite low...the rotor speed is quite low as a result. I can't detect any perceptible magnetism either, no permanent magnets. It was sold to me as working, but when you put your hand across it and shove it down you only get a bit of a tingle. That said I put a 10 ohm resistor across it and rammed it down and smoke did come out of a 1/4 watt axial resistor. I saw Cody on Cody's lab destroy single Christmas lights with his. That said his is more like your example which is said to shoot like 50 caps, mine 1 to 10. I measure open circuit 132V I got as high as 160V with 1mS peak capture. Short circuit current is around 5A if you override the switch at the bottom of the plunger stroke. If you allow the plunger switch to operate normally it's more like 3A. In the rest state the B+ and B- terminals are a dead short across the output of the generator. I think that's as a safety feature, also the dynamo is operating into a short so the currents get pretty high. In mine the rotating section is about 23.5mH and the windings on either side of that (the field coils I guess you'd call them) are around 16mH each. I suppose if it acts like they're all in series at the end it could be as much as 700mJoules or there about. It's beautiful for something over 130 years old, but I'm not 100% sure it's working totally right. That said I cleaned the brushes (they're just copper tines) and the commutator (it's literally just two halves with a single wind) and nothing is shorted out. I cleaned the switch at the bottom as well. You can see arcing at the commutator and the bottom switch at the end of the stroke so I think a lot of energy gets lost to that safety switch / build up functionality. Maybe I should setup the scope and current probe and try and characterize the delivered energy and such. Wish I had a second example to compare to. Maybe those iron pieces were magnetized and somehow my example has lost some of its magnetism making it weaker? I am measuring tho 102Wpk at 1mS according to my multimeter into the 1/4 watt 10 ohm resistor as 31.92V for 1mS, it's 3.08A when measured in current mode, close enuf. If I change to 100mS and measure current for 100mS it's around 800mA into 10 ohms so you're looking at 6.4W. I read somewhere Blasting Caps need 1~5mJ to activate so maybe it is working right.

Many years ago, about 45 years, I had a detonator like your picture. I'm curious too, so I had to look. The generator resembled the ringer generator in an old style party-line telephone. I don't think it would generate as much voltage as the picture, but the ring voltage of a telephone is at least 60 - 70 volts; and the generated voltage would easily exceed 100 volts. Interesting.

Have to say I never thought there was a switch in them. Yet another thing I've learnt from Clive!

Big C-Live, Su-prah Geeeenius. Seriously though, super neat. This was definitely one of my childhood questions.

Hi Clive, the generator part is in fact a magneto, or self exciting dynamo for the more technical. The extra connectors from the brushes are used to generate a magnetic field within the stator coils, removing the need for permanent magnets.

The burn marks around the terminals would seem to be an indication of the high voltage involved, maybe through being used when there's some condensation inside.

If it's not made by ACME fuggetaboutit

I know, two year's late. A couple of points on the generator. 1 those dead shorted are actually easy to push down. They don't build a magnetic field as the voltage does not build. 2 The switch at the bottom is to ensue full speed and voltage is built before closing the circuit. Without the switch the relatively slow heating of the caps would be interrupted when the firs one blew, preventing the rest from going off. The switch provides high current to start all series caps before the explosion breaks the circuit. 3 Without the switch, the un-exploded material makes widows when the digging starts.

Knew about the dynamo/generator gear/ratchet bit. Didn't know about the switch. Thanks!

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who watches roadrunner and Wile E coyote!

The first time I saw one in a movie and I noticed the rack (toothed bar) on the outside I deduced that it was this way. If the cartoon had this detail I bet many children would someday in the future deduce that too. That is what the Coyote gains for buying things from A Company that Makes Everything.

I have this old phone from 1955 (I think) with a crank on it and it produce a lot of juice when the hook is on and I always imagine that you could fire a blasting cap with it. If you hold the connectors in your hand without shorten them you don't have to crank it fast for it to be quite unpleasant to hold on. Once I hooked it up to my phone socket and cranked it and my line was dead for half that day :) It was used in an apartment store and when you cranked it a bell went off at a switchboard and an operator answered and connected you where you wanted to call before everything got automatic.

Last video made me wonder too. Glad too see this video, even though I already looked it up.

It would be fun to have one of these set up randomly somewhere in the house with wires disappearing out of sight. You could have it hooked up to a big subwoofer or rumble device somewhere distant, giving the impression that something was set off far away. About 10 or 20 seconds or so later, distant siren noises. Good for house guests to discover.

Think you need to watch what your doing here Clive, might have more than the posty confiscating your delivery, Mr Plod might be round with his big red key due to events in the UK lately :). Love your videos mate thanks for taking the time to do them.

I figured out how one of those detonator boxes works just from hearing the sound one made when I saw and heard it on TV once. It has a small generator/dynamo which is operated by the handle. When the dynamo gets up to speed, the handle reaches the bottom of its travel and hits a switch to send the current from the dynamo through the wires to the detonating cap in the explosive and... ka-boom! (As they say in the cartoons) :) I think it also has a one-way ratchet so that you can lift the handle without operating the dynamo. Now I'm going to finish watching the video to see if I'm right. :D

This reminds me of a device my father used when he was an electrician. It was a box with a handle that you turned rapidly that generated a high voltage that was accessible via two terminals with insulated nuts on them, and a meter calibrated in meg-ohms. He called it a "mega", and I believe it was for testing supply wiring insulation. Have you seen one, used one or own one? Sadly we no longer have it, but when i was 5 or 6 years old I used to love turn the handle and listening to the cogs grind and the generator spin.

Clive, I think you have assessed it accurately, the merit of using the stored mechanical energy is that it cannot fire accidentally like a capacitor could. I guessed it would use a rack and pinion, clever in it's simplicity.

Seeing this made my day. I had a smile like a Cheshire cat.

Had a blast watching both videos. Nice one!

gosh those are lovely prints.

love wile e coyote

This is Clive's polite way of asking for an expensive gift :D

Ask Cody to measure his generator

I've expected it was something along those lines in such a device. Never did look into it, though. Great video!

The extra wires from the brushes would be the field coils, with many turns of fine wire due to the high voltage, probably 4 coils for relatively slow speed generating, cheers.

Something I never knew I wanted to know (okay maybe I did) but now I do! Thanks Clive

The other reason they're wired in series is that if there's bad wiring anywhere, it just doesn't fire. In parallel you could wind up with unfired explosives still attached to a live blasting cap just waiting for a static zap or something to ignite it, and nobody would know it's in the rubble there.

I came here from Cody's Lab. Yours is a much better video. Thank you, I subbed!

Just think how much fun you can have scaring your cats with that, Very cool piece of kits cheers Big C

I used to have an old military surplus handheld blasting machine but it was the type which used Cannon connectors and I didn't have any.

There is a flywheel attached to the generator. That's what stores the power of the electrical charge. The unit I studied had an generator identical to those found in early telephones.

You really should be doing big clive Christmas/solstice lectures LOL but seriously!!

i show a 1942 dynamo blaster on my channel. made by an Australian Electricity Meter company. Last time I looked there was some on Ebay UK. Exploders Dymano Mk VII

I always thought those detonators just contained a battery and capacitor, and the plunger was a simple switch that discharged the capacitor into the wires. Never expected this - at least it never needs recharging!

Very interesting! And now I can't wait for the bubble-blowing fish video!!

You can actually hear the blaster generator winding up in this clip from an old danish movie kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nraIna9nnJvRZIk.html

This was one of those "well, of course it does" things. You really only have to see a couple of Westerns or other period drama where such things are used. A dynamo is the only thing that fits the purpose. The more so if the sound track includes the noise of the thing. A battery couldn't have needed the plunge action and nothing else is really possible. The bit that I hadn't anticipated was the switch, although in hindsight it should have been obvious. The bank always happens only when the plunger reaches the bottom. Even Roaddrunner shows that. :)

I have used one of these and the amount of force needed to go threw the stroke is a lot more than you would think - its actual work - box weighs about 20 pounds

You should get one. I'd suggest using shipping by a ship (in a container), not by post. There has to be such a service in the UK, probably used mostly for shipping cars and car parts from America.

I researched this question a few months ago for Wikipedia's article "Blasting machine". The blasting machine was invented by Henry Julius Smith of the U.S. in 1878. See U.S. Patent no.s 201,296 and 353,827 and 534,289.

They are usually wired in series to eliminate partial detonation (all or nothing) plus its far easier to test continuity on series wiring

Didn't expect to see anything on this channel from my area.

there are a few movies where you can here the dynamo ramp up as they push the handle down.

I can't remember any examples, but I've seen several Western movies where you could tell that actual hell-boxes were being used - not props. The actors were putting in some effort to push the handle down, and you could hear the gears whirring.

I figured that's how these worked, but your last video did have me wondering exactly how they worked xD

I used one of these when I was in my late teens. I am 80 years old, so that was a long time ago.

Looking forward to the "Bubble fish" video, also another vote for a "Frankenprinter" video. :)

You should get in touch with Cody from Cody's Lab. He actually has one and has used it to lite off explosives.

I used to call these "bike pump dynamite thingies" when I was younger, because the plunger somewhat reminded me of a bicycle pump.

I was hoping you'd make this video. Danke sir Bear

A friend of my father had both several of those, and a couple that looked the same outside and had the same activating mechanism, but were battery driven with a couple of those big rectangular lantern dry cells. Those were used when there were Radios being used on site as there was a fear of the generator picking up enough energy off the vehicle radios to throw a spark. I don't know if it was a real risk of like mobile phones and petrol pumps.

Great video. Just be very careful using other people's images. I used (1) in a video a long time ago, and the person threatened to contact KZfaq, I ended up deleting the video to avoid problems. I think you'll be fine on this one, because you're advertising the item.

ive never noticed just how much clarity is in those printed pictures, you better keep them in a folder called "Wile-e-coyote's dynamite porn"

I'd love to meet the government internet inspector tasked with monitoring Clive's Ebay purchases. One second he looking at high-explosive detonators, the next he's ordering novelty water pistols. Talk about a reason to drink heavily!