Multi-Tools and Black-Powder Explosions:

I've been given a 'Multi-Tool' - by my electricity supplier - by way of "Brownie Points" - you have to go through a list of stuff that you never knew you wanted and pick something that costs a lesser number of points that you've been given - before they are taken back ("expire") !

The courier stuffed the over-packaged tool into my mail-box - the ingenious and complicated assembly of stainless steel parts needed a multi-tool to extract it from four layers of plastic packaging and the innermost sealed capsule of a clear blister-pack.

- No wonder that we are being warned by The United Nations that we have to stop burning oil / coal (and plastic oil derivatives!).  - well I hoped that there might be a decent screw-driver blade in it - but of-course there isn't - about the only truly useful tool seems to be the pliers part.

I won't be swapping the multi-tool for my Opinel knife  - so off it goes into its "free" cordura pouch and .. Ah, Christmas is coming - who's going to get a present of a nice shiny new ..?

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- Here's a 'Wild West' tale from history about something that does work - Gunpowder has been recorded in Western Society since the 13th Century:

"In 1824 Ashley started out on another trip to trade for furs. Bill Sublette and his brother were among the number. They started a keel boat up the Missouri to bring down a load of pelts. There were no steamboats on the Missouri in those days and they had to pull the keelboats up by hand with ropes. The boat had started off up the river, and Ashley intended to have his ammunition wagon meet the boat at St. Charles.

 La Barge, I don't know his first name, but he was a brother of Joe La Barge, a jolly German they called 'Happy-Go-Lucky', and another man whose name I have forgotten, were put in charge of this wagon loaded with guns, pistols and 300 pounds of powder.

Conestoga Wagon and Team. Note the man riding on the "lazy board".

They drove out Washington Avenue, about where the University now stands. There was a little schoolhouse at the corner in those early days. La Barge was smoking a pipe and just as the wagon was going by it, he knocked the fire out of his pipe. It fell on the kegs. Every keg in the wagon exploded and blew the men sky high.

 La Barge went up a hundred feet and came down dead; so did the other man, but Happy-Go-Lucky came down, rolled over a few times and then died. The wagon was torn to splinters, but the horses ran away unhurt. One of the strange things about the explosion was the fact that an old dog was trotting alongside the wagon and didn't get hurt a bit, excepting that a little of his hair was singed off.

That was a pretty hard lick for Ashley, but I fitted him out again on credit, and I was the first man to be paid when he came back with the keelboat loaded with pelts."

From Samuel Hawkens "Memoirs", given to JPH Gemmer in 1933 by Otis A Hawken. A copy of the MS is in the possession of the Missouri Historical Society.

- The saltpetre from Ashleys plant was hauled to a gunpowder factory in Potosi, which Schoolcraft describes as the only powder plant in that part of the country. In the eighteen month period, from Dec. 31, 1816 to June, 1818, it produced 60,000 pounds of gunpowder valued at $30,000.

- all quoted from 'Guns On The Early Frontiers' by Carl P Russell.

- So, be careful when reloading that ammunition Boys - as Life is good.

Marty K.