[Dana Acker]

I believe you’re on to something, Carl. I read somewhere that cast iron was something like 4.0% carbon. Once I found some cast iron balls, a little bigger than marbles. When I heated one of them and hit it with a hammer it was like forging an egg shell, it just shattered.

Years ago you could tell the pot smokers from all the little burn holes in their shirt from exploding seeds. When I hit that ball it was like the flaming flux that sprays out when forge welding, or more like hundreds of flaming BB’s exiting the barrel of a sawed off shotgun at close range. It took a while to convince everyone that it was really just a forge incident, and that I wasn’t smoking weed in the shop.

You know it was probably just a couple of guys at the smelter trying for extra points, seeing if they could throw their chicken bones from lunch and land them in the crucible. “Mine went in; two points!”

And that, my friends, “...is the rest of the story.” How many other major events in history, weren’t the result of genius and endeavor, but more a case of, “Here, hold my beer while I....” and it just happened to work out favorably?*