Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-05-11

THIS has always been a most diverting
pastime, appealing specially to the
young and curious We dearly love to find
out the exact point where the actual edge is
on the hay outline of the whlrring circular
saw it is great fun to see how near we can
come to being run over by an automobile;
it affords us reasonable entertainment to
see how white a motorman gets when he just
| misses US; feeling moving machinery IS fas-
chatting, and there is no time when skating
IS more enjoyable than when the ice is not
quite strong enough to support US.
And we never know just what will happen
when we investigate a blasting cap. When
we ask the results of hitting it with a ham
mer we are frowned upon, and there IS no
way of being enlightened on the subject SO
fruitful Of immediate and convincing results
as by trying it ourselves. When we ask
what is illuminate of mercury?' with which
blasting caps are filled, even the learned are
apt to hedge If we inquire what would
happen if we dropped a cap into the kitchen
stove, our desire for learning is not appeased.
We are told we had better not try it; SO we
have either to abandon our search for exact
knowledge or try the experiment. 1t was
reported lately that
Willie found some dynamite.
Didn't understand it quite;
1t rained Willie seven days.
The disintegration and distribution of
this earnest investigator IS much to be depre-
Gated and lamented, of course, but Willie
will probably be much better off as the result
of his experiments with dynamite than he
would have been going through life with one
or two eyes and several fingers or hand
missing, which probably would have been
the case if blasting caps had been the sub
ject of his examination, instead of the bene-
ficient and kindly dynamite.
Willie was undoubtedly an unusually re-
sourceful child in making the dynamite go
off at all. Modern powder makers are lying
awake nights thinking up ways of making
dynamite safer and more insensitive. That
is all very we'll; but. unfortunately, larger
and stronger blasting caps must be made to
explode this dynamite, and more and more
of them. Then some miner carries home
few caps in his overall pockets, his wife finds
them when she goes through his pockets, and
puts the caps on the kitchen shetland the
first thing you know Willie or Heinie or
Dominck or little Angelo has one and is
making off with it, and pretty soon there is
trouble in that household.
THERE are lots of ways of getting crippled
by exploding blasting caps besides hit
in the fire. Extracting the contents with pin
distributes untold fingers; holding lighted
match under them or thrusting the flaming
end into the cap gets immediate action In
the mines and quarries, even, where the men
who have to use blasting caps every day
ought to know better, there are plenty of
mangled hands and punctured hides as the
result of crimping caps on fuse with jack
knife. pointed nail, or any tool that S handy.
Many miner has blown a hole through his
face in biting the cap on the fuse, and Others
have filled themselves with copper or have
been killed outright by the sparks from their
hat lamps or pipes dropping in an open box
of caps. Lots of blasters continue to bite
the caps on the fuse, and think that because
they have never exploded them they never
will; but some day they will bite the bust
ness end and lose something besides teeth.
1t is much easier, and lots safer, to use the
crimper, a tool made for the purpose Acct
dentally stepping on a cap will often spoil
perfectly good foot Sparks, flame, heat,
blows. friction,-it's all the same to the cap
to which they are applied.
Boys often play in and around quarries