Fishing for Guns....and catching, too.

turkeydance

turkeydance

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amazing:
https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=a7OOQ_1535984462

A family who went magnet fishing reeled in a bag full of guns and ammunition.
Father Douglas Simcock, 39, found the weapons when he was fishing with his family on August 26 at around 2.15pm. The arsenal was discovered wrapped in yellow hi-vis jacket with bricks in it.
Douglas, who has been fishing for two months now - was out with his wife Sarah Simcock 29, daughter Hayley, 9, and son Josh, 10, near the river Irwell, Salford.
 
The magnets are called Rare Earth magnets and made up of neodymium. They are polarized magnets usually in the Z axis vs our common magnets that attract from 360* in all axis. Not really toys as you can pinch yourself easily if you get it accidently near metal.

On Youtube there's a lot of videos of people magnet fishing in Europe and pulling up a lot of WWII weapons in Europe. Here is one channel for example.

I got into watching a lot of the videos and had just enough bourbon in me to go shopping on Amazon. I did some searching trying to find the best bang for the buck and most of the "reviews" were pretty accurate for what I bought. None would hold the actual rating and supposedly full rating is taken on solid steel so if an object is just sheet metal, it doesn't have the same pulling strength (much less). I bought two different 250ish lb pull magnets and 8 small 90lb pull (going to gang them up on a piece of bar stock).

I think if I were to do it all over I'd go for the 500lb one, but at the time, I wanted to buy two, one for myself and one for a buddy to try. My plan is to wait for the river to drop back down to 2-3' and check out the current bridges, railroad bridges, old ferry crossings, the remaining old Civil war dikes (some supposedly had guard shacks on the ends), and old landings on the Neuse. By the time my schedule worked out and boat was ready to go in late July we received those 3 weeks of rain and the river shot up. It is just now falling back down.
 
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Sounds like fun.
 
There's a bunch of vids on Youtube of British guys magnet fishing and pulling up guns, ammo, bombs etc. Typically the video ends with PC Plod and the usual Nanny State BS but the reactions can be pretty amusing.
 
Actually nothing all that new. I recall in the mid 60's when my Grandfather dropped his keys in the water while walking down the dock at Lena Landing in AR. He went in the bait shop and they had a magnet that he used to retrieve the keys and a bunch of other crap (beer cans were ferrous metal back then) while doing it.
 
I don't like the idea of fishing for bombs. Y'all have at it.
 
I call BS.

That couldn't have been the UK. The guy showed a complete lack of fear and panic at having found an "arsenal" of weapons and ammunition so light he could put it all up out of the water by himself.

I think it was his own stuff.
 
RetiredUSNChief said:
I call BS.

That couldn't have been the UK. The guy showed a complete lack of fear and panic at having found an "arsenal" of weapons and ammunition so light he could put it all up out of the water by himself.

I think it was his own stuff.
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I'm English and when I was a kid I used to make my own bombs and firearms. Technically I made an RPG attack on a government vehicle.

They were crude, probably super illegal, but something I did. Not all of us knuckle under.
 
NCLivingBrit said:
I'm English and when I was a kid I used to make my own bombs and firearms. Technically I made an RPG attack on a government vehicle.

They were crude, probably super illegal, but something I did. Not all of us knuckle under.
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COOL!

Did you ever fill a CO2 cartridge with gunpowder, stick some dynamite fuse in it and seal it with electrical tape, put it in the middle of half a dozen butane cigarette lighter refill canisters, wrap it all together with glass tape to be sure it held long enough for the CO2 cartridge to rupture them all, then in the middle of the night, light the fuse and toss it over a bridge into a river?

I didn't.

(I can't confirm whether or not it makes a really cool yellow-orange fireball.)
 
RetiredUSNChief said:
COOL!

Did you ever fill a CO2 cartridge with gunpowder, stick some dynamite fuse in it and seal it with electrical tape, put it in the middle of half a dozen butane cigarette lighter refill canisters, wrap it all together with glass tape to be sure it held long enough for the CO2 cartridge to rupture them all, then in the middle of the night, light the fuse and toss it over a bridge into a river?

I didn't.

(I can't confirm whether or not it makes a really cool yellow-orange fireball.)
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Yes to the CO2 casing, but I used smokeless powder out of shotgun shells and home made fuse or Estes rocket igniters (because push button command det is best det) and would generally bury that in the middle of nitrate home-brew or big sacks of home made (and rough as a cob) black powder. Most charges went off in the forestry commission woods, because we used to blow up the trees and rabbit warrens that riddled the banks there.

It got pretty advanced by the end, clusters of Estes engines for propulsion (I learned fast to angle them for a spin effect, much like a gyrojet round), impact fuses from shotgun hulls and homebrew firing pins, timed rounds using the Estes engine charge that kicks out the parachute. We even did one two-stage Katyusha-style thing that went about 300m from a 45 degree launch ramp and did that whole cratering munition thing and dug a small crater. I even made a man portable launcher and planned to make a carrier for a "production" round that I was going to produce in small numbers but the test on a moving target convinced me to dump most of that stuff into the lake in a weighted bag.
 
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JimP42 said:
What, were you in the IRA Junior Guard?
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Wash your mouth out with lye sir!

Nope, my Dad taught me to make fireworks out of potassium permanganate, potassium nitrate, sulphur and sugar when I was six or seven. After that I started looking up other stuff in books at the library, by pestering chemistry teachers and eventually I scored a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook, which was sort of disappointing. I've always been a bit of a pyro and explosions are just deluxe fires......
 
NCLivingBrit said:
Yes to the CO2 casing, but I used smokeless powder out of shotgun shells and home made fuse or Estes rocket igniters (because push button command det is best det) and would generally bury that in the middle of nitrate home-brew or big sacks of home made (and rough as a cob) black powder. Most charges went off in the forestry commission woods, because we used to blow up the trees and rabbit warrens that riddled the banks there.

It got pretty advanced by the end, clusters of Estes engines for propulsion (I learned fast to angle them for a spin effect, much like a gyrojet round), impact fuses from shotgun hulls and homebrew firing pins, timed rounds using the Estes engine charge that kicks out the parachute. We even did one two-stage Katyusha-style thing that went about 300m from a 45 degree launch ramp and did that whole cratering munition thing and dug a small crater. I even made a man portable launcher and planned to make a carrier for a "production" round that I was going to produce in small numbers but the test on a moving target convinced me to dump most of that stuff into the lake in a weighted bag.
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I made a lot of stuff...and got started at an early age. Early, as in before Kindergarten (before I was 5). My brother's all attest to me blowing up the trash barrel in the back yard with a Coke can filled with gunpowder I had made after watching one of them make it in the garage. Apparently there was a beating involved in that one which I have no memory of. One of my brothers once told me "If I had my *ss beat as bad as Dad beat yours, I wouldn't remember anything either."

Mercury Fulminate was a cool one to make. And guncotton.

I stopped at nitroglycerin, when my research at the library told me the process generated heat and required an ice bath in the manufacturing process. As much of a pyromaniac as I was, I decided not to wager my body parts on that particular venture.
 
RetiredUSNChief said:
I made a lot of stuff...and got started at an early age. Early, as in before Kindergarten (before I was 5). My brother's all attest to me blowing up the trash barrel in the back yard with a Coke can filled with gunpowder I had made after watching one of them make it in the garage. Apparently there was a beating involved in that one which I have no memory of. One of my brothers once told me "If I had my *ss beat as bad as Dad beat yours, I wouldn't remember anything either."

Mercury Fulminate was a cool one to make. And guncotton.

I stopped at nitroglycerin, when my research at the library told me the process generated heat and required an ice bath in the manufacturing process. As much of a pyromaniac as I was, I decided not to wager my body parts on that particular venture.
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I didn't have space for all the really fun stuff. After my still burned the shed down I had very few rights to secluded spaces lol
 
NCLivingBrit said:
I didn't have space for all the really fun stuff. After my still burned the shed down I had very few rights to secluded spaces lol
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The trash barrel incident probably goes a long way towards why Mom's nose was so sensitive she could smell me strike a match in the basement before the phosphor tip finished flaring up, or crack the seal on a bottle of model paint...but she couldn't smell the green beans carbonizing on the stove in the kitchen.
 
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