I'd like to hear of any homemade projectile throwers. I'll start. When we could buy firecrackers here, I became pretty good at making stuff that shot stuff. My favorite was an old percolator stem from a coffee maker. It fit over the bottom half of a ballpoint pen. A lady finger would slide comfortably into the half with the fuse coming out where the ballpoint normally would. The percolator stem would act as a barrel in order to give a longer range and accuracy. A white navy been was a perfect projectile as it fit well in the barrel. My first few attempts resulted in a shotgun effect as the blast would shatter the been and give a good spread. I wanted more penetration. So eventually put wadding in, which allowed the bean to stay whole as it traversed the basement and put a bean sized hole in my bedroom door. My 8 year old nephew ratted me out to Pa who tore a strip off me. I used to also wrap playdough around a block buster, carving out shrapnel lines then letting it freeze in the Canadian cold. That was fun. And of course, the ever popular match heads in a pingpong ball. Ahhh, youth.
Hehehe, we built an selfmade mortar out of an plastic pipe that we coated with some layers of an strong tape. Than we used the powder of some chinese crackers and made a projectile out of styrofoam and an piece of an broomhandle. The finns were made of food cans. Ignition was made by BP wrapped into a thin paper and sticked into an drilled hole at the side of the pipe. It worked not so well, til we used grease at the styrofoam. Than you could shoot a few meters with it. Normally the grenade was destroyed by leaving the pipe and only the broomhandle made it a few meters. Great fun!
Since I grew up in a "firearms" society (Montana) I had no real reason to build "zip guns", but when I heard about them in the fifties (West Side Story) I simply had to figure out what they were. So being a kid, with access to a shop I asked around and figured out what the heck was meant. Now while this might make no sense at all today, back then the radios in cars used a "telescoping" style antenna. You could extend it for better reception out in the "boonies" or lower it for "town reception. I will not stand by this, but I think all the major car makers bought the antennas from common suppliers rather than build that little item themselves. The things were three or four separate tubes which retracted into each other with the final section being solid. Oddly enough the lower section had nearly a perfect .22 caliber (5.57mm) ID, or interior dimension. And unlike a tube from a percolator, this was chromed steel not aluminum and hence a bit stronger. Not strong enough for too many uses (3 or 4), but better than the coffee pot piece. Anyway, LeRoy and I decided to see if we could build a .22 "zip gun". We cut off a six inch section of antenna from a Chevy, reamed out the cut line, and inserted it into an oak block we had drilled to accept it (we heard they might explode and injure the shooter). The block was then attached to a "pistol" grip section of soft pine by using Elmer’s Glue and friction tape. On the pistol grip we put a "church key" bottle and can opener and fastened it with thick rubber bands to the grip. This allowed you to "slide" the church key to the side a little, insert a .22 short or long (not LR), and "slide" the "firing mechanism" back into place. Now you pull the opener back with one hand, and release it while holding the "gun" with the other. Pow. Only good for about five shots the way we made it until the antenna liner tube must have given out and the oak block showed "splintering/expansion". We didn’t want to loose a hand or an eye so we threw it away. But hey, we made a "pistol" out of rubber bands, friction tape, a beer can opener, wood and a car radio antenna.
To tell you the truth, given things today, I don't think this thread is a good idea. I for one am not about to discuss my "youthful experiments" with people on the internet..... Some, well, many were far more effective and um... well.... not something to discuss.....
Any moron can build something dangerous. Some fool in my grade 7 class decided to light the stream of paint from a spraypaint can. It blew up and freaked out the other 10 kids watching, sending dummy to the hospital. I now consider myself fortunate in not blowing myself up when I filled a metal cigar tube with gun powder and making a small hole in the screw end cap. Used the fuse from a firecracker to ignite. Then I attached the landing wheels from the elastic band propelled balsa planes you could buy back in the day. I was thinking along the lines of the "Blue Flame" world record land speed car record at that time. I lit it in my newly paved back alley and waited for a sonic boom. But all it did was flip around and create a hella lot of smoke. I'm lucky it didn't go nuclear on my a$$.
At my first job in an Electronics factory I used to wire a 9v capicitor the wrong way around (neg to pos and pos to neg ) also wraping it in silver foil and puting it in a cigerette box, After about 15/20mins it would go bang and all of the silver foil would come down in bits great fun > The worst thing I built wich was extreamly dangerous (DO NOT ATEMPT THIS),I was 3inch tube ,Drilled a whole at one end put a tube in this (Im not telling the full build because it can go very wrong) fixed a relay and a gas lighter, You them put an orange in the tube let the gas out of the lighterpress the button wich operated the relay making a spark thus blowing a whole through 3/4 (20MM) of wood at 100 ffeet (30m) close this thread!
Seriously? Close the thread? Lol. You afraid someone might learn how to build a Molotov cocktail? Or something off of Discovery channel? Even "Lockdown" will show you how to make a shank out of a toothbrush. pffft.
Since this was done under strict supervision of my high school shop teacher it should be tame enough for the thread; In order to learn a little about the finer details of foundry work, machining lathe work, and Newton's Law's, we were instructed (read allowed), to make a cannon. Due to the nature of the item in question we were all sworn to secrecy. After swearing on our relatives graves (or ours if things didn't work out), the teacher agreed to provide the black powder. Without going into too much detail molds were designed thus teaching us the finer aspects of having an engineering degree. Making the molds taught us the Art of the Pattern Maker. Pouring, removing the cast and rough filing- "finning"- taught the methods of proper production techniques. My mold was the typical Civil War style. Bored out to accept a 'BB' and mounted on polished and varnished Cherry wood. Mine actually attained rifling when I drilled the bore. (got an "A" for that!) A 3/4 inch plywood backstop was set up with a 2 foot circle drawn in red. With each of us taking turns loading our cannons and watching the door, we fired at the target. Most of the designs work very well. Some better than very well! When we took down the "backstop" we found that some of the cannons had exceeded the instructors expectations. We left it up to him to explain how the nearly two dozen star-burst patterned holes had happened in the window behind where the plywood had been. Thus teaching us Newton's lesser known 5th Law: every action can be explained better by an Adult. I still have the barrel of the cannon around and need to make a new mount for it one of these days.
The only thing that I'm concerned about is the fact that kids could be looking at this thread and trying to do what we did when we where younger, This thread sould be shut down IMO!!
Results after Googling the title of this thread: About 1,970,000 results (0.19 seconds) Pretty benign stuff here.
never made anything other than the obligatory potato guns. We did however enjoy the occasional roman candle fight with trash can lids for shields.
With the general availability of a wide variety of means of making or obtaining weapons of all sorts, I don't see this thread as particularly harmful. My biggest forays into weapon making was making our own bows and arrows (with tin can lids hammered on as points) and bobby pin guns made from blocks of wood, nails, and rubber bands. Let me tell you, bobby pins sting when you get hit. (Do they still sell bobby pins?)
It takes ingenuity to do this stuff.....They used to sell these small single shot spud guns here. The chamber would open to the side, and there'd be a single "bullet" you'd pull out and use to put a plug of potato in. Then youd take your circular cap and place on "bullet" and load gun. Well i didn't like the velocity so I'd take as many caps as I could and stuff into it, thereby creating a magnum. The results were impressive but the gun would start to fall apart if shot too hot too often. Some of us would have 5-6 loaded weapons and what wars we'd have!
I made this "replica" 1800s artillery piece out of ABS piping (with the 3" "barrel" wrapped in fiberglass tape). I had one of those extended lighters (for candles) at the bottom. When you sprayed something flammable (hairspray worked well) into the "breech", closed it and flicked the lighter, it made a hell of a bang. I'll never forget the first time I tried it one night - a giant bang followed by big flame coming out the barrel. The "recoil" made the cannon jump up a few inches and pushed it back about a foot. I never did try to shoot a projectile with it, but shooting "blanks" was fun enough.
