What happened to all the bonfires?

[Nublue 22]

Just a trip down memory lane, back in the 60s  around our little streets there would be bonfires dotted around here and there each run buy there own little crew, the fire brigade would turn up to have a look to see all was well, it was a great time, ever one came out of there home's to see, the night went on with out any problems and all had a great night. I am just thinking about how much our society has changed and is it for the best? Could you imagine building a bonfire at the end of the road now? What with the police, council and climate protesters it would be a very busy social event, let's start it all up again? (Don't know who's collecting the wood?) 

[mossy835]

yes i used to have big bon fires in the back garden,dad never liked it but o well.my mate had a pocket full of bangers some one put a match in there coat came of very quick,

[bottletopbill]

Used to be a competition between a couple bits of waste land the local woods suffered.

Every one stored wood for bonfire night  jumping jacks ariel bombshells spinning wheels. Bangers from France used to vibrate the shop window's.

Kids now days are not allowed to do any thing but  use there electronic games.

Prams wheels to make the wooden trolley's  glad i was a kid then as could buy a gat gun and a catty . 

[dipper]

We went to the local woods chopped a tree down .The canal was near home we towed the tree in the canal home . I remembered putting A 2p banger under a a bin lid on the ground and it lifted several feet i the air .

 

[B725]

As kid's we used to start collecting wood early October anything we could get our hands on, going down the field's chopping off any branches we could and dragging them home.  That was as much fun as the bonfire itself, almost every house would have its own bonfire and not forgetting penny for the guy to try and have a few bob towards more fireworks.mum also made bonfire toffee that would pull out the fillings from your teeth, happy day's. 

[Dave at kelton]

Used to Nick the best wood off other bonfires so you had to have guards out running up to the fifth. 😂😂

[30-6]

Good old days. Neighbouring villages fought each other, trying to light each others bonfire. Each had " sentry's " on duty. The middle was hollowed out to make a camp.

Used to make banger guns out of copper pipe. Used to buy cheap clip together boats, airfix type thing, sail them on the local river and elastic band bangers to them and blow them up.

In the 60' s 5th of November was important to a 10 year old.

[old'un]

As a kid myself back in the 60s I also remember collecting wood for the local bonfire, I say wood, anything that would burn went on the bonfire, beds, mattress, upright piano's, the smoke was horrendous and without fail for the next few days there was thick fog and the smell of fireworks in the air, happy days.

[millrace]

You's lot clearly never venture to northern Ireland.....bonnies you say....lol

[bottletopbill]

Christ are we all over 55 years old on this site

[old'un]

14 minutes ago, bottletopbill said:

Christ are we all over 55 years old on this site

in years yes.

[old'un]

4 hours ago, 30-6 said:

Good old days. Neighbouring villages fought each other, trying to light each others bonfire. Each had " sentry's " on duty. The middle was hollowed out to make a camp.

Used to make banger guns out of copper pipe. Used to buy cheap clip together boats, airfix type thing, sail them on the local river and elastic band bangers to them and blow them up.

In the 60' s 5th of November was important to a 10 year old.

“banger guns out of copper pipe” did yours have the banger fuse or match head and hammer to ignite the charge?

used to pinch my dads fishing line shot and shoot the moorhens on the canal, amazed how any of use never ended up dead.

[mossy835]

15 minutes ago, old'un said:

“banger guns out of copper pipe” did yours have the banger fuse or match head and hammer to ignite the charge?

used to pinch my dads fishing line shot and shoot the moorhens on the canal, amazed how any of use never ended up dead.

 

 

yes banger gun out of pipe, i made a few of them good fun .

[bluesj]

Still going strong in Sussex, just got back from sorting a few things out for Firle next Saturday.

[old'un]

56 minutes ago, mossy835 said:

 

 

yes banger gun out of pipe, i made a few of them good fun .

When I was about 13 and after a few disasters with copper pipe I decided I needed something stronger to take the pressure, not far from home was a small factory making pressure gauges, outside the factory was a big bin where they put all the scrap bits, my eyes light up when I spotted a piece of steel pipe with the perfect dimensions, bore 3/8th, wall about 3/16th and about 15 inch long, there was my new banger gun.

My grandad was an engineer and had a shed with all the things I needed to complete the task, after many hours I had my first shotgun that fired as quick as you could pull the trigger, yes it had a trigger and a hammer and a pine stock, it was a bit like an old percussion gun with a match head in place of a percussion cap.

I had to experiment a bit to get the charge correct but once I had found the perfect load I was off out hunting with it and at that time and age anything was fair game.

When I think about it now it was bloody dangerous but at that age you see no danger.

[Nublue 22]

6 hours ago, B725 said:

As kid's we used to start collecting wood early October anything we could get our hands on, going down the field's chopping off any branches we could and dragging them home.  That was as much fun as the bonfire itself, almost every house would have its own bonfire and not forgetting penny for the guy to try and have a few bob towards more fireworks.mum also made bonfire toffee that would pull out the fillings from your teeth, happy day's. 

Brilliant just opened the memories of penny's for the guy, we went door to door one time and got chaste around nearly at every other door, we gave it up as a bad idea, looking back any one of us could have been mistaken for a guy, 

[bottletopbill]

Kids cant be kids any more to much PC could you see a child carrying a axe or air rifle today down the street.

playing knock down ginger tying a bit of cotton to a door knocker then pulling it.

Building Hay jumps  bales of hay piled up then jumping from trees into the bales.

Problems we used to cause the local farmers.

But in the snow we cleared the paths for  old people so we had some good points.  

Good job the kids do play with electronic games now as i am a old **** now. 

[30-6]

Old'un

We just lit the banger and dropped it in backwards.

We used to have " gambos ", pram wheels and planks, anything combustible went on there, and when full we'd sit on there and ride it home holding up the traffic.

Another thing we done was fire rockets up the roads, laid on the tarmac they would follow the kerbs.

We did clear the paths of snow for people, and used to hang around strategic positions so when cars got stuck in the snow, we'd offer to push them for a fee.

Bus stops and working men clubs were the best for penny for the guy.

[7daysinaweek]

Back in the day used to fire rockets out of drainpipes, just like a rocket launcher. Superb stuff!

Singed me eyebrows once making a 'Genie' from the powder out a load of fireworks. 

I am a lot more sensible in my older years.

[marsh man]

Tell yer what , reading the above posts make us feel like angels when we were lads , bon fires were nearly a everyday occurrence mainly because we were badly flooded in 1953 and piles of wood laid at the end of most of the roads , rather than wait for them to be cleared the people who lived there used the 5th of November and many other days to have some major fires , then when the area was mainly cleared of burnable stuff the council then came up with the bright idea that all the outside bonfires would be on the beach , I can well remember that some of them were huge , all you had to do was to take your wood and anything else that burned down to the seafront and dump it on the beach in line with the bon fire , the council workers had a digger and they would load it up and cart the stuff across the beach and they would ding it all on the bonfire , the odd one was lit before the 5th but the locals were pretty good and it was lit when it got dark on the 5th , this could be seen for miles and I recon they must had pre warned the shipping in case they thought half of Yarmouth was on fire, now they ain't had one for years as they said it cost a lot of money to clear up after the event .

As for these copper pipe guns , again we never had anything like that , mine you we did have two long threaded bolts that were joined together by a nut in the middle , in the nut we stuffed half a dozen caps , the sort of things they used in cap guns , the bolts were gently closed until they nearly touched and then when a crowd was drawn together it was dropped to the ground and when the end of the bolt hit the concrete there was an almighty bang and how anyone never got hurt it was  more by luck than judgement . 

[Dougy]

I lit a fire down the bottom of the garden. Some bloke came out from a house behind me moaning the smoke was going into his house..

I very thoughtfully suggested he closed his windows. 

I think I can fairly say he got hotter than my bonfire.. 

[old'un]

15 hours ago, 30-6 said:

Old'un

We just lit the banger and dropped it in backwards.

We used to have " gambos ", pram wheels and planks, anything combustible went on there, and when full we'd sit on there and ride it home holding up the traffic.

Another thing we done was fire rockets up the roads, laid on the tarmac they would follow the kerbs.

We did clear the paths of snow for people, and used to hang around strategic positions so when cars got stuck in the snow, we'd offer to push them for a fee.

Bus stops and working men clubs were the best for penny for the guy.

The Development of the Banger Gun

yep, that's what we did to start with but then I had a eureka moment ...... so the end of the copper pipe was flatted and folded over, then a hole was drilled to take the fuse, the black powder was poured down the pipe followed by a bit of paper then a small amount of fishing shot and another piece of paper to hold the shot in, the pipe was bond to a piece of wood (the stock) and the fuse lit, this worked but it took to long for the gun to go off, anything you were aiming at was long gone, soooo...how to make it an almost instant firing gun .... that's where the match heads come in, so instead of drilling a hole for the fuse I used a centre punch to sink a deepish indent into the copper pipe which would hold the match head, a small hole was drilled at the bottom of the indent to allow it to ignite the powder, a very crude hammer was fashioned and an elastic band was used to pull the hammer forward after it was pulled back and released with your thumb (I still have all my fingers) this all worked very well and as you have seen in my previous post it was refined using steel pressure gauge pipe.

Just to say with the earlier copper pipe guns I did have a couple of copper pipes split open on firing.

This is extremely dangerous so don't try this at home kids

[30-6]

That sounds genius thinking. All we done was fashion a bit of copper pipe and drop the firework in backwards after lighting.

[Dougy]

13 minutes ago, old'un said:

The Development of the Banger Gun

yep, that's what we did to start with but then I had a eureka moment ...... so the end of the copper pipe was flatted and folded over, then a hole was drilled to take the fuse, the black powder was poured down the pipe followed by a bit of paper then a small amount of fishing shot and another piece of paper to hold the shot in, the pipe was bond to a piece of wood (the stock) and the fuse lit, this worked but it took to long for the gun to go off, anything you were aiming at was long gone, soooo...how to make it an almost instant firing gun .... that's where the match heads come in, so instead of drilling a hole for the fuse I used a centre punch to sink a deepish indent into the copper pipe which would hold the match head, a small hole was drilled at the bottom of the indent to allow it to ignite the powder, a very crude hammer was fashioned and an elastic band was used to pull the hammer forward after it was pulled back and released with your thumb (I still have all my fingers) this all worked very well and as you have seen in my previous post it was refined using steel pressure gauge pipe.

Just to say with the earlier copper pipe guns I did have a couple of copper pipes split open on firing.

This is extremely dangerous so don't try this at home kids

You could put a thread on scaffold poles and get a screw on end cap. 

Not going into too much detail but, it was very naughty what we made with them. 

[bottletopbill]

marsh man  I had forgot about the nut and caps trick we also used to fill hollow keys with red match tips and place them under the school desk lids with a bit of metal making them strike.

What a lot of nasty kids we all were but we turned out ok in the end took us over fifty years to get there.