Oh what fun. Thing that got me with the can of beer on the bonfire is that it was a can of beer. And and theoretically non-explosive . OK, as in 'Four Yorkshiremen'... This is a RN vertical launch Seawolf missile, the bottom half is the Cadiz booster that gets it out of the magazine cell and pointing on the way to the target - thrust vectoring, very cool. The top half is the missile itself which is powered by a Blackcap solid rocket motor which will get the missile up to about Mach 3. Where I worked we had had an incident with a quantity of rocket propellant going on fire (nasty) and needed to to a trial to see how big a burn would occur if a full 20 odd kg of uncontained Blackcap motor went off. I was there with our Safety Officer when we did the trial. Theoretically uncontained the thing shouldn't have gone anywhere, as it was open at both ends, theoretically anyway. We started off standing about 30m away when we ignited it. Then as it got going the bloody thing started to pulse like a V1 jet engine, alternating end on end, blowing down the containing walls and then starting to jump about the range as we all took ever larger steps back. Even at the best part of 60m or so you could feel the heat of the thing through gloves. Great fun once it actually stopped.

Similar effect obtained when the carpenters disposed of their supposedly empty nail gun gas cartridges in the site bonfire. No bonfire on our property but bits on a few gardens beside us.

I remember experimenting with aerosols when I was a kid. A near empty deodorant can in a bonfire created enough of a bang to cause minor devastation. But with some refining, we eventually created an "interesting" missile. An aerosol can of lighter gas (seemed to make sense at the time) mounted on a small crude launch ramp. Then a small fire set just under the valve. Said valve melts, gas escapes and off the can went. In a not very predictable way. We all were surprisingly sensible and had moved a distance away and behind a fence. Just as well as it turned out! Ah, the joys of yoiuth.

Mild anxiety……? Nothing mild about it! This is a U-shaped (ish) arrangement requiring two almost full lengths and a short section. It’s the two long lengths that need most of the jointing work….. obviously…. The discovery (after forming the first joint!) that the worktop we have is actually 620mm and template is for 600 or 616 didn’t help and extended the process, though happily it was fixable. PVA. And will silicone also on final assembly. Did this with a small metal screw-top cocoa tin with a little bit of petrol in it.  We (small posse of pre-teen kids) had a small bonfire going, which was completely obliterated when the “bomb” went off. Was a helluva boom. Mum came out to se what was going on “thought you had a bonfire?” Errr…..

I use both 

Cunning sir, indeed a plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel (ungreased of course!). A rather nice watercolour of the Spitfire

I have never been brave enough to router a worktop, luckily I had a handy chappie who could and was very reasonably priced (he was a pukka apprentice-trained cabinet maker, got cross when called a carpenter)  I hope you used some nice thin varnish to seal the cut ends.....seems that has gone out of fashion and most use silicone (or CT1 now?) but varnish seems to be the system that works best long term)

Tough job, aside from the mild anxiety arising from the potential of getting things expensively wrong, the sheer physical effort of humping that stuff about is somewhat taxing. Impressive John Ooh err! Going back to things you in your schooldays. Another 'thing' with unopened drink cans, is their ability to extinguish a camp fire. Does a pretty decent job of rearranging the contents of said campfire in the process 

The cans don’t always hold either, though less dramatic than bottles…. Coke (or other carbonated drink) cans blowing up in hot cars is also a thing and makes an unholy mess.  Luckily in our case (Fanta) it happened in a car with vinyl seats and rubber mats, so could have been far worse! Was challenging to return the seats to a truly non-sticky state. The car was unoccupied at explosion time too.

I have done the same, but glass bottles. My outcome was rather worse than yours.....