The Cherry Bomb

A cherry bomb is an explosive device that was sold as a firework a long time ago. It was banned in 1966 by the child protection act due to kids losing hands and fingers. It is normally found as a red sphere with a small green fuse extending out of it.

Warning! Cherry bombs are extremely dangerous and should never be manufactured. They are also extremely illegal to make, possess, and sell. Due to legal issues, I had to stage this pictorial. This means that I did not actually put flashpowder inside of this or any type of pyrotechnic mixture. This is here for information purposes only.

 

Materials	Equipment
Cup set	White Glue
4 inch long fuse	Scissors
Flashpowder	Pencil, or Awl

Aquire the neccesary materials (its hard to see the section of fuse in this picture)

Weigh out 3 grams of flashpowder (this is actually a lot, most people use around 1 gram of flashpowder)

Pour the flashpowder into the smaller of the two halves of the cup set

Tap the cup half on the table to settle the flashpowder down into it. Here is what it should look like

Set this aside for a second and grab the other half of the cup set. Use a scissors to make a starter hole in the center of it

Use a sharp pencil and poke a hole that is just a tad smaller than your fuse into the half with the starter hole. I'm using a 1/8" thick fuse, thats why the hole is big

Turn this cup half upside down and use your fingers to stretch the open end out.

Take the half that is filled with flashpowder and put glue all around the outside of it. Remember you don't need to cover the whole thing as it will squish to where it needs to go.

Place the other half over this so that it slides down all the way. It would be wise to press on the sides a little bit to get the glue to move around

Take your fuse and push it through the hole as far as it will go into the cherry bomb. You should be left with around 3 inches of fuse sticking out.

Put a bead of glue all the way around the fuse where it contacts the cherry bomb

You are now done, just let it dry for about 12 hours. You can use it as is, or coat it in a mixture of sodium silicate and sawdust with a little red food coloring to give it that cherry bomb appearance. You can use white glue instead of sodium silicate for this, but you need to dilute it with a little water.