WALTON COUNTY, Ga. -- A Georgia man trying to videotape shooting a lawnmower packed with explosives lost his leg.
"We get a lot of calls about Tannerite. It can be extremely dangerous if it is not used correctly," Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman told 11Alive's Duffie Dixon.
Tannerite is the brand name of a combination of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder. When mixed and shot with a high-velocity bullet, it creates a loud noise and explosion. The manufacturer recommends using no more than .5-pound at one time. But demonstrations using up to 100 pounds at one time have become popular internet videos.
The apparent attempt to make one of those internet videos cost one man his leg.
According to the March 19th incident report obtained by 11Alive, a sheriff's deputy responded to a call about an explosion. A 911 call reported 32-year-old David Pressley was shooting Tannerite in the woods and "had possibly blown his legs off from the explosion."
Two of Pressley's friends fashioned a tourniquet around his leg, helped him to the front seat of a vehicle, and drove him to a nearby road. That's where EMS met the group and started working on Pressley. "EMS advised David was missing his left leg below the knee," the report notes.
He was airlifted to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He is now recovering from the incident.
One of Pressley's friends told investigators they put three pounds of Tannerite into an old lawn mower "to blow it up". That friend also told the responding deputy the entire incident was captured on video. It became police evidence.
11Alive obtained that video. It shows Pressley dressed in what appears to be a tactical vest, sunglasses, and a ball cap. He shoots a semi-automatic rifle at the lawn mower for 30 seconds, getting off more than 20 shots. On the last shot, the lawnmower explodes in a cloud of smoke and the camera shot wavers.
"I blew my leg off! Oh, [expletive]!"
That's when what's happened hits the amateur cameraman: "Aw, [expletive]!"
"Call an ambulance! Call an ambulance!" a voice is heard yelling. The video ends.
Tannerite is legal in Georgia, and no charges will be filed.
One use for Tannerite is thinning the herd and draining the shallow end of the gene pool.
there are so many "intrinsically safe" binary compounds availble . They are easily made by a 5 year old. Tannerite has a wide range of energy and shock wave potentiql, qll bsed upon a few grams either way of some of the three components.
Ive seen kids at our local gun club loqd old cars with it and then blow the damned things up. Sometimes they would use like 5 or 10 gal buckets of the stuff behind the doors of the cars and when they blow up, you can see the shock wave being propogated in all direction.
Someone asked the gun club owners to put "blast wave piezometer discs" down at various distances and see which ones break at q potentially fatal pressure wave. They said Naaah, its just kids having fun.
A few months after that occured we had two kids suffer blast induced
concussions and then everybody got all over it
I experimented with black powder bombs as child into my teens and I still have my vision, my hearing, my fingers and legs. That is not an endorsement of bomb making. I was VERY lucky particularly since my first experiments at 11 or 12 was deconstructing shotgun shells. The right humidity and a hot day could have marked the end of my career.
My grandfather used urea, fuel oil and blasting caps to remove stumps and boulders and I'd like to think that I picked up some of his care in doing that work, but the truth is: I was lucky.
I used all sorts of major, major fireworks around my kids, but I won't let my grandchildren (or my kids when young) around a sparkler.
This stuff can be handled safely, but the handler needs to be safely handling it.
When the manufacturer says .5#, well .5 it should be, especially for "entertainment" purposes. Walking in on 3# of that stuff with its amazing expansion rate was beyond stupid. Did he really think he could add more energy to his rounds by walking in closer?
good thing most all states require a buyers kicense, storage permit for caps and explosives, as well as a license to handle stuff like caps and ANFO.
Tannerite falls in the crackks because there is really no intrinically dngerous component. . There are at lest 5 or 6 different formulations for a "tnnerite" mix, the only common element os the Aluminum powder
do you mean the germans used it as an explosive? Im almost certain they wouldnt use it for gunpowder.
Youre talking Flash Powders. Its a sensitive pyrotechnic agent that could be used as an explosive.
Do you have a link on the german use of "weapons grade"Al powder ?
Various high explosives containing ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder are called Ammonal and were used by a number of countries including France, Germany and Britain before, during and after World War 1. It was used by the British in World War 1 in mines buried under the German front line. In one detonation, at Messines in 1917, a number of 30,000 lb and 20,000 lb mines were set off at once. 10,000 German soldiers were killed. The large craters are still there. This was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. In Vietnam, the US used 15,000 lb of Ammonal in the BLU-52 "Daisy Cutter" bombs used to create clearings in the jungle.
This is not stuff to mess around with. I am amazed it is freely available anywhere.
I haven't found any reference on line yet but I certainly read about in some shooter's magazine in the late 60's when we were playing around with it. However like I said, it struck me as dangerous. I'll keep picking at it. As I recall the German army used it stretch out their powder.
Right now all the search engines are taking me to Tannerite recipe sites and videos of guys blow **** up. None of which really interests me anymore.
0 Replies
farmerman
1
Reply
Fri 25 Mar, 2016 02:31 pm
@Tes yeux noirs,
MOAB was a similar makeup.
Tannerite is made so that it can be initiated by a point impact of about 1500 fps and is a bit dangerous to hillbillies, while the US military ordinance using the same ammonium nitrate/Aluminum(ZrOH/Ti) is a very safe unit because its packed within a polystyrene matrix. Reports that the Fuel Air Explosives (FAE) were our largest non-nuke explosive, but, to date, the MOAB (Mother of All Bombs), had produced the biggest effects.
All these are rather primitive explosives and only became available when Aluminum became cheap to produce. (It was worth more than silver in the late 1800's)
we do use gun- powders in mining today because the Ammonium and perchlorate based oxidizers would oxidize, "burn", rapidly, (Not a true explosion). rapid Burning has a habit of shaking rock while TNT **** just punches big shot holes in the ground with little rock and roll
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