Our ‘misguided’ (read as ‘drunken’) experiments involving aerosol cans and cigarette lighters has to count for Levels I and II, right? I mean, come on, we almost died! Yeah, technically we knew the risks…

Spent part of one summer holiday as a kid experimenting with different formulations of home-made gunpowder. Various forms of carbon from around the farm, sulfur from the nearby train bridge, saltpeter from the local drugstore. If you don’t grind the sulfur fine enough it really spits.

Once I found a nice oak log with the center rotted out and a hole in the side, so naturally, I started a fire in it. Once the inside was lined with embers, I bent a piece of aluminum soffit into a cylinder to go into the hole and put the hose from a shop vac set to blow in the other end. All that extra air really gets it going, with a nice plume of sparks/embers shooting out the top. It would get hot enough to melt an aluminum can in under a minute. Very entertaining, but sadly one use only.