First the dwarves….

I managed a fair bit of base coating tonight as well as some highlighting of packs and pouches (not that you can really tell from this photo). For idiotic reasons known only to myself I painted the beards first then tried to paint in the flesh tone! The officer has grey hands still as he shall be wearing gloves.

These seem to be taking forever, I know that, in the grand scheme of things, they are not, but to me they are dragging on. Probably more my state of mind than reality.

Anyway onto the exploding custard powder. This is because as I found a 30 year old photograph today. It shows an experiment we devised whilst working on the Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales.

A group of us were sitting around in the hostel when we learned of an explosion in a custard powder factory. Discussion ensued as to how and why custard powder could explode, being inert as it is. Coal dust yes as we knew coal was flammable. A bit of head scratching later we came to the conclusion that it would have to be as a fine powder in the air. Queue hunt in the larder for the out of date tin of the required ingredient.

Having explored the properties of said ingredient we needed a way to turn the powder into a fine mist. Blowing on a spoonful sort of worked but not properly, then again who would want to volunteer to blow onto the powder to make it explode!

A bit more of head scratching took place and the Edward came up with the ideal solution….

A bike pump!

Sadly it did not work as we wished…back to the drawing board!

It was then that someone (the name now lost to the track of time) came up with the solution.

Dismantle the bike pump, add deadly ingredient, reassemble and then fire custard powder over a naked flame.

We set up our experiment in the hostel and I was just about to hit the plunger, when Edward came to the conclusion that inside, may not be the best place to attempt our initial trial.

So after much grumbling and muttering we took our experiment outside and placed it on the mini skip. I took a number of photos that evening. Only one survives in my collection.

Here we have Edward taking his turn at the Custard Powder Bike pump.

We all agreed afterward that perhaps he may have been correct in his conviction that this was an experiment best conducted out of doors! Strangely enough over the course if the evening we ran out of custard powder, not to mention flour and any other substance we could locate.