I'm sure you all did it... or something similar...
My very first gun was a brass souvineer cannon from Valley Forge, Pa. Of course it wasn't bored out all the way to the flash hole, that is not till I found a cutaway drawing in a book. I went to the old man's workbench, clamped it into his vice, found the drill bit that fit the bore the closest, and drilled it out the rest of the way. I got a hold of some .43 Egyptian cartridges, pulled the bullets, and I had black powder! I used the drill bit as a ramrod and firecracker fuse to touch it off. One time I forgot to remove the ramrod and it blew the cannon right off the carriage and the drill bit was embedded sideways in the garage door.
I was 9. I still have the cannon on my bookcase.

A couple years later I acquired a sporterized 8mm mauser from an Uncle. I also got hold of a quite a large box of blanks. the kind with the wooden tips. Well, I discovered that if I pulled the wooden bullet out with pliers, and dumped the powder, that a double 0 buckshot pellet fit nicely into the case mouth, and when fired would propel the ball with just enough force to penetrate a cardboard box at about 20 feet in my basement. Well, one thing led to another, and I started adding "little bits" of powder at a time, "to see what happened".
Okay so I ended up shooting a 00 bouckshot through both sides of the cardboard box, through the metal storage cabinet door and through most everybodys winter coat which was stored inside. That ended my reloading career for a couple years..

How about you guys?? FESS UP

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Don't tread on me!
Pennsylvania Frank

When I was a kid I had one of those toy muzzle loaders that shot a cork ball propelled by a greenie stickum cap stuck to the hammer. I there was a port from the pan to the breech which allowed the flash from the cap to get into the barrel and propel the ball.
One day my two older brothers decided to stuff the barrel full of match heads. There was a hole in the barrel an inch or so in front of the breech face which allowed the cap flash to bleed off-in normal use. They stuck a piece of firecracker fuse in this hole.
Since this was my gun, I wanted to hold it while they lit the fuse. Instead, they decided to prop it up on a grape vine. My one brother held on to the end of the stock with his arm extended while the other brother lit the fuse.
When it went off, the gun exploded, the stock shattered, and the barrel flew across the alley and smacked the neighbor's garage. My brother who was holding the stock got splinters all up and down his forearm. If I had been holding the gun in the normal manner I probably would have been blinded. Someone was looking out for me that day.

Packing a .303 cartridge with rocks and using the primer as a target for our air rifles was always very good fun.

Max503 � you awaken good memories. I had one of those muskets as well. Problem was that the ramrod was not long enough to seat the cork ball well, and the friction from that long barrel bled off velocity too quickly.

However, they made the same thing in a pistol � now THERE was a real shootin� toy! The ramrod was long enough to allow one to firmly seat the ball. One day I primed mine with eight, count�em eight, greenie stickum caps all piled on top of one another. We were playing Cowboys and Indians and I snuck up behind my best friend and let him have a round to the shoulder from about 3 feet. Who�d a thunk that a little cork ball would do much? It took a nice patch of skin off and left a bruise about 2 inches in diameter. Whooeee � they used to sell some great toys back then!

As to the original question: Nope, I never did anything stupid. . Now the kid down the street took an empty CO2 cylinder and filled it with matchheads and then stuck a firecracker fuse in it. He dropped it in a metal garbage can and stuck the lid on quickly, then we both ran behind the concrete wall of his garage. Just as we cleared the wall it went off. It warped the can and blew the lid off, and there were about 4 or 5 jagged holes in the metal can from the shrapnel. One piece of shrapnel penetrated the lid and went on to go completely the wooden eave of the garage.

Pa.Frank __

Sometime around the beginning of WW2, at about the age of 12, I found that by putting a match-head in an expended 22LR case, flattening the open end, bending it over, then smacking it with a hammer, the result was a satisfying "Bang!".

I'm still carrying around the head of one round in my left ankle. Of course, I sucked up the pain and never told my parents.

Good shooting.

Robert

The worst was pulling the #4 shot from a 12ga round and replacing it with steel slingshot ammo (1/4" steel balls). My dad "had" a really nice winchester ultralight with a steel lined fiberglass barrel in full choke. It is now mostly cylinder choke. And if I can ever find a replacement barrel I still owe dad.

I also built a small "cannon" which generated enough recoil to break through a 2x4 and embed itself 3" in the ground below. I believe the charge was 2/3 of a camera case of FFg behind about 3oz of sand and rock packed over newspaper wadding. The cannon had about a 2" bore.

The other stories I won't relate until I'm sure the statute of limitations are up. I had access a torch, a welder, scrap steel and had my grandpa's chemistry book. I lived way out in the country... thank goodnes.

Yep, my good friend and I did all of those things and more (built a black powder cannon from scratch, loaded shotshells with a Lee loader and whatever odds and ends of components we could find; Remington 57-size primers were glued with Elmer's into 209 hulls when necessary; etc., etc.). And if a case full of surplus 4831 scooped from the keg didn't do a good job with any centerfire rifle, then it was a cartrige not worth having.

Although I certainly wouldn't recommend many or our stunts to my own children (I was born in 1950), today's kids unfortunately don't seem to have the inquisitiveness, the inventiveness, or the opportunity to experiment, to grow, and to learn the way previous generations did. Much of this has to do with most everyone living in a suburb, some of it has to do with kids being channeled into passive entertainment like TV and, increasingly, computers, and some of it has to do with the counterproductive repressiveness our society has adopted in the name of safety and security.

I heard a report recently on recruiting employees with a talent for problem-solving. It seems that the human resource gurus have figured out that people who have experience working with their hands and without the benefit of instruction are much better problem-solvers at every level, whether physical or hypothetical, than are equally intelligent persons who have no such experience.

I'm a richer person as a result of the stupid things I did as a kid.

first thing was talking to the little girl next door, ended up marring her.
then the next most stupid thing i was involved with was cutting the end of .410 shotgun shells to pour the shot out, we then placed a arrow in the bore of a the .410 H&R santa brought for christmas, insert the shell and let'r rip! arrows would go through 8" trees at about 25yds.
#3 would have to be the M80 firecrackers dipped in wax and then roled in some #6 shot.

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born on a mountain, raised in a cave, hunting and fishing is all i crave!

OK! Stupid and Illegal, of course, I was a young buck at the time.

I "built" a sound suppressor. I first decided to try it on a 10/22. Mounted it up with rubber gaskets and fastened it on really well. It was simply a bottle drilled, inside an bottle (all plastic). With a steel wool filling between the two bottles. There was a wiper on the end, made of rubber, into which I cut an "X". There was more, but I'll leave it at that, as I am sure a lot of you tried similar designs.

So it was awesome on the 10/22.

I placed it on a CAR-15 that was chamber in 9mm. Once again the result was much better than I expected. So, now I'm feeling cocky.

7.62 X 39, yeah an AK! As I'm sure you know, I went ahead and tried it. Guess what? It was a "definite reverse mood" of sound supression, as the bottle exploded as the first AK round screamed out. Luckily, my neighbor was the only one to react to the sound. Which I found very strange. It sounded like a friggin' grenade going off.

The pressure of that AK round blew the bottle out. There was no bottom to the bottle and the bottle itself hardened and twisted about half way down, I suspect from heat. The steel wool? Your guess is as good as mine as to where that disappeared to.

Now, for pure stupidity, can anyone beat that?

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Live Free! Madison, Jefferson and all the boys paid for it, and so did our very own fathers.

I made my own artillery piece.

I took 12ga shells, cut them off where the wad meets the charge. I left the bottom portion of the wad, slipped the upper crimped section over the brass portion to better seal the powder, took steel bearings and superglued them to the primers - then carefully filed, and neatly sealed everything up with tape, hot glue, etc until I had a few somewhat uniform rounds.

I was not advanced enough to thread and cap my barrel, so I beat one end flat with a sledge, and folded it over on itself to get a pretty good seal. I then drilled a very small hole at the breach end.

The rounds were seated wrapped in a vaseline soaked piece of material, bearing end up, over a good squirt of lighter fluid. A flame was held to the hole and...

POONK! I got a real mortar-like ring to the tube

I managed some success of having the rounds go off when they hit, but they were very lopsided and tended to come apart.

I entertained thoughts of sending mice into orbit, but...

I gave all this up when I discovered that a tennis ball was just the right caliber for a barrel of soldered soup cans. Shortly thereafter, flaming tennis ball flares lit the night skies of my neighborhood

Of course I blame all of this on my age and the wealth of millitary literature I had at my fingertips

geez, and I though our potato guns were hot stuff. Always very disappointed about the accuracy, though.

Do remember starting to hook the welder up to a pipe filled with powder pulled from firecrackers. Thought better of it, just in time.

Whew!

Dutch.

we never bothered with loaded ammo, we would take pill bottles and load them with blackpowder and put cannon fuses in the top, then wrap the whole thing with cast material(got it from a vet we knew, was used for making casts for animals with broken legs). Once it dried we used it for fishing, worked great. Got out of hand though when we decided to upgrade to tennisballs, makes a nasty crater in the neighbors yard.

Fond memmories, I wonder what happened to my cap powered cork ball gun, that as I recall, was purchased from Disney Land. I do recall using multiple caps, but the balistics weren't that good.

I also recall a cap gun that looked kinda like a seecamp 22 auto, but used a 2 piece "case" that you inserted a cap in, then chambered and bang. If you loaded enough caps in, the case would eject like a real auto pistol.

Didn't get into reloading until a few years ago, but I did find out if you take an estes solid rocket, and break the propellent up into a powder, that it makes a decent explosive.

Oh, just recalled the stupidest youthful stunt, would fill up dixie cups with white gas, set ablaze, then shoot an air gun at it to rapidly spread the burning liquid. Amazing I never gut burned with those stunts.

Paul,

I tried the solid rocket fuel thing too. I have a nice scar across the back of my left hand to prove it. Man those things burn hot!

Don't try these. Having majored in organic chemistry, I had/have tons of dangerous knowledge at my disposal... thermite through an old chevy staight six... molotov cocktails out of toluene... My favorite though was a balloon filled with 2 parts oxygen to 1 part acetylene to the point of burtsing all wraped up in a paper grocery sack. My buddys and I worked at a large soccer complex with a fully equipped machine shop that, among other things, had lots of welding supplies! Light the bag and run! Bricks set on the bag would be pulverized. The geese on the far side of the complex(1/2 mile) flat left. The first time we did this, only walking away, it nearly knocked my buddy and I down, 20 yards away! Most impressive though was an old international dump truck(not in service) that had one go off in the cab. Every piece of glass was blown out, both doors were blown open, and I'm lucky I never maimed or killed myself!

David Schnabel

I know someone else has done this. Ya wanted a penny with a hole in the middle of it. Sooooo, you held the .22lr vertically and placed a penny on the end of the barrel and...bang! Ya, that one left a mark. Thank God i lifted it above my head or i could have lost an eye.

The balloons. We used to fill 9" balloons with a little helium THEN topped them off with oxygen and acetylene. Attach a cannon fuse, light & release. This was fun until someone got the bright idea to use a punchball! We filled that thing to the point of bursting. Put about a 3' fuse on it and let it go. We lost sight of it when it entered the clouds about 4 miles away. When it blew we saw a flash in the clouds and then a sound like thunder.......

mike

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NRA Life Member

Since I have to be registered I cannot say the things I did.

Suffice to say I never hurt anyone and never destroyed anything of value.

Davis' Chemistry of Powder and Explosives, 2nd Edition (my dads 1st edition was stolen)

Weingarts Pyrotechnics, 1st Edition

E. I. DuPont Nemours & Co. 50/50 Red Cross Extra

#6 BlastMasters

I AM a chemistry major.

What a great thread, I just hope my boy doesnt read it!

In high school machine shop I got my hands on about a 2" dia bar of 316L stainless steel. I cut off a piece to make a cannon, went through 3 power hacksaw blades in the process. Drilling took days and was a virtual nightmare. I still wonder how I got away with it.

One day in a school parking lot I thought Id suprise a girl and I loaded it 1/2 way with pyrodex and the other half was paper wad packed just as tight as I could get it. When it went off it shot across the lot like a bullet itself careening into the concrete curb at the end of the lot and breaking it up. The pressure was so high that the middle of the stainless cannon swelled up like a ballon. It worked though, the girl was positevly stunned, so was I.

I once took a piece of 3"xx heavy pipe (1|2" thick wall) 36" long and was using it as a spud gun. Welded a piece of plate to the bottom drilled a small hole in the pipe just above it. Shove a spud halfway down fill it with ace tiling and oxygen light it and instant mashed potatoes, as it flew out the end. Got the harebrained idea to use gunpowder one day. got out the 5# keg of n165. handed it to my buddy and told him to put in a little as I searched for a suitable spud in the bag. When I found one he was still poring. set it about 20 feet out the door in the parking lot, trickled a line of powder to it as a fuse. lit her up and watched intently as the powder fizzled toward it. When it went off it blew the pipe about 60 feet in the air, blew a 2 foot dia. by 1 foot deep hole in the pavement. it also blew 1 foot off the pipe and mangled about 6" more. There were lots of cars in the area and none suffered any damage. I have no idea where the bottom of that pipe went.
We were very lucky it did not kill us. But one thing for sure the party was over at that point.
I have done a lot of other stupid shit but nothing this dumb before or since.

for a real, real big BOOM we filled a 50 gallon trash bag full of acetylene and oxygen then wraped the top tight with tape, pulled the rest of the tape off of the roll for a leader then put the bag about 10 feet from a newspaper on fire, got behind a trash dumpsterand slowly pulled the leader tape until the trash dumpster moved 3 feet and all the lights blew out in a nearby building. Words of warning to anyone with an idea of trying this it is very loud and with whats going on in the world now it may cause you some trouble.

A friend of mine used to fill the plastic 5ooml pop bottles half way with dry ice, screw the cap on real tight and chuck it. As the dry ice transforms into a gas, it builds enough pressure to explode the bottle and wake up the rest of the block.

Turok

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Make it idiot proof, and some one will make a better idiot

We had a friend in the mess who got slightly drunker than the rest of us. We filled his metal waste bin with water, put it in the centre of the room, tossed a thunderflash in and ran.

The noise was horrendous, we opened the door and all the walls were covered in filthy water and liberally peppered with shrapnel. Of the bin only the base remained. Our friend was still unconscious and unmarked. Someone else wanted to try a trip flare but it was decided this might set off the smoke alarms......

I have a bunch but nothing compare to my Father. During WWII, when he was 8, his Father brought him a "practice" bazooka rocket, from a local military range. Funny thing, his was black , his friends were all blue. Hmmmm???? First thing was to toss it off the back of his friend's porch. Well.....Took out most of the back of the house and nearly severed his leg with some flying object. He was extremely lucky to have a surgion capable of re-attaching his leg. He met the Doc on the golf course years later. The Doc was amazed that he had a functional leg let alone a normal one except for the scars. I can safely say he is the only person I have ever heard of that actually shot himself with a bazooka.

[This message has been edited by scot (edited 10-10-2001).]

My dad brought home a 6.5mm Arisaka from WWII. I could not get any ammo for it back in the late 60's so my buddies and I deceided to convert it to a shootable caliber. We liked to blow-up old guns in those days with Bulleseye overloads and were always looking for a new project. My friends dad was a gunsmith and had a lathe (Southbend) in the basement. With a rudimentary knowledge of gunsmithing learned from watching my friends dad, we took the barrel off with a pipewrench , stuck it in the lathe and rechambered the thing with a 30-06 reamer(looted from his shop) held of course in a pipewrench. Headspace was suitably determined by the ability to close the bolt on a loaded round.Throated it with a drill. We put it in a tire ( equipped with a 20ft string), put in a Federal round and fired it. It worked fine! Did this ten more times and to our suprise it didn't blow up. Now this thing is shooting a .308 diameter bullet through a 6.5mm bore. The bullet is really being swaged down! I got cocky with the thing and shot it offhand and could keep all the shots in a 6 inch circle at 50 yrds. We finally showed it to my friends dad who went nuts over how stupid we were! Two years later my friend shot a deer with it at over 100yrds. That old Jap action could take darn near anything and never showed any signs of coming apart. God only knows what pressures were being generated. I think the thing still exists someplace in New Jersey.

I wasn't satisfied with the power of the .22 Long Rifle cartridge in my Savage Model 24 .22/.410 over/under. So, I carefully cut the star-crimp off of a .22 LR Shotload, removed the shot and wad, added an interesting selection of powders gleaned from shotgun shells and other .22 rounds, topped this off with a carefully-salvaged hollowpoint bullet from a Long Rifle round, pressed this rather long creation into the chamber and fired.

I had set up a substantial number of 1" nominal pine cutoffs, backed by plenty of newspaper. The bullet penetrated many of them, far more than any .22 Long Rifle, expanded nearly to the size of a dime (and wafer-thin). Pure success. Nearly: I decided the load was impractical because I had to extract the case-body independently of the head, a little brass disc, and because the recoil was sharp enough that I was left holding the forearm disassembled from the rest of the gun. Many, many years later, perhaps showing that great minds run in the same channels, Winchester introduced the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire....

Your chemistry experiences bring back memories. Our school had an unusually good lab and course. I became bored with identifying chemical salts and so on, so decided to make some nitroglycerin. I was so pleased: the experiment went exactly as the books say. However, my lab-rig lacked the cooling apparatus necessary for safety, so when I saw the reaction veering off toward overheating, I simply poured it down the sink. Point proven --effort undiscovered. I was quite fortunate in that lab: also undiscovered was the misfortune of washing a chunk of metallic potassium down the drain, only to have it surface in the airspace of the top bend of the trap underneath. I sweated that one for a while.....
Paladin

I'm surprized no one mentioned tennis ball guns yet. Remember when tennis balls came in metal tubes. One could soak the tennis ball in gasoline, poke a touch hole at the back of the tube. Ignition is with a match, and out flies the flaming tennis ball.

My brother and I (7th and 9th graders) had a shooting range in my room to try out reloads for my 03 Springfield. It was a grape crate stacked with old Life magazines. We kept in a drawer beside my desk. It would stop the bullets if you did not miss. We had a grand time when the folks were not at home. Our ears did ring a lot but we both can still hear fairly well. We were discovered when my brother missed with his .303 Enfield and shot a big hole in the ceiling above my father's desk in his office downstairs.
We got a .22 blank pistol and bored it out to shot .22 LR ammo. We could not hit a thing but it did not blow up on us. We also had some home made cannons and several old Civil War Colt Revolvers that we would use for "experiments" when nobody was around to hear.
One of our favorite tricks was to shoot large rifle primers out of a .22 air rifle at stone walls. They made very pleasing explosions when they hit.
How did any of us survive the adventures of childhood?

Speaking of tennis ball cannons, i remember one a friend of mine made out of 18 old style (non-aluminum- which were still available at the time) sodapop cans [4 of the cans were the 'combustion chamber' for the naptha we used]. We took it to a local golf course green to try it out and shot a tennis ball straight into the air. It disappeared from sight so long we were all about to assume it had gone into orbit when i happened to see it 're-entering'; we all had plenty of time to get out of the way. I have no way of knowing how high it went but when it hit the green when it came back down it bounced easily at least 50 feet back into the air. I'm not about to relate any of the more questionable activities i was part of back in the old days... i just feel lucky to still be alive and that i had remained unincarcerated.

I had a number of interesting projects when I was a child. I would take a piece of scrap wood and bore out a hole (the size of a beebee). Then, I would use a grinder to transform the wood into a navel cannon. I could usually fire it about 10x before the cannon lost its structural integrity. The little, 1 inch long contraption was able to fire a beebee about � inch into a fence.
Another fun activity was to make rocket propelled cars. We would take the bottoms off of Stompers (for those of you unfamiliar with Stompers- they were 4 wheel drive AA powered 4 inch long cars and trucks). Then, we would make a rocket using 1/4 to � inch diameter brass tubes filled with gunpowder. By crimping the end down to about 1mm, we were able to get a flame up to about 10 inches long while the car traveled as high as 10 mph over 100 feet. We made a fuse using, what else, gunpowder. This was ignited by a blowtorch. This was good, clean fun until a friend of mine had one blow up right next to his hand while my father looked on. The kid was lucky he did not catch any shrapnel in his hand.
Lastly, we started to experiment with gunpowder mixed with finely divided metals like magnesium and copper. One activity was to drill a hole in the ground using a screwdriver. Then we would pack the metal/gunpowder into the hole. When it was ignited, we saw a nice green flame coming out of the ground (when we used copper) or white with magnesium. Unfortunately, the police put an end to this fun. Apparently, this is considered to be an illegal firework in Arizona.

I found a strip of 32 cal nail driver blanks and placed one on a hard surface so that I could smash it with a hammer. What a surprise. It lifted the hammer up so fast that it almost hit my face and a piece of shrapnel cut my hand. I am fortunate that I didn't put my eye out.

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RC

When I was a kid, my older brother and I used to make match head rockets. We'ed light them by squirting lighter fluid on them, throw a match and run like the devil. Most of them careened off down the street spraying fire every where much to the neighborhood's despair. Some would explode with a satisfying bang.

Later we used to get into wars with pellet guns loaded with copper wire we, uh, found, yea, thats right! We found this wire! Any way, we'd cut it into about 1/2 inch lengths and shoot at each other. We wore heavy coats of course. Still don't know how we managed to grow into adulthood with all our fingers and eyes.

The best though was the cannon I made in machine shop when I was a junior. Took a 6 inch chunk of 4140 about 14 inches long, drilled a 1 1/4 hole in it with a touch hole. Then I made some "wad cutters" out of some stock from the metal rack. Just cut it into 1 inch lengths and faced them off on each end. Took it home, my brother, two friends and myself put about two ounces of black powder FFG in it, followed by paper and a "wad cutter".

We set it on the edge of the bank behind the house, lit the fuse and watched. There was a sound that ratteled the windows, the cannon rocketed back about fifteen feet and was stopped by the house. My dad stuck his head out the window and yelled something that to this day no one knows what he said. We were all gone. Oh, the "wad cutter"? It knocked about ten feet off the top of one of the poplar trees down the hill. And, I still have the cannon.

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Surely we must all hang together, for separately we will all surely hang.

Turok,
Did your friend ever try sending that pop bottle into the depths of a waterhole attatched to a string and brick? Its amazing what floats to the surface!
Regards...
Con

This isn't really reloading related but does discuss blowing stuff up.

When I was growing up, Dad used to always have at least on bag of M80's laying around. We would shoot them with the .22LR to blow them up. After we got bored with that, we startes shooting them out of sling shots. One guy would pull the band back and the other would light it. This was more fun in the winter time with 18" or so of snow...made a neat looking mine field.

The two best times I remember involved M2000's. The first instance was my Dad's friend using his Anshutz (sp) .22LR to set off an M2000 at 100 yards. Wait there is more.....it was covered in tuna fish......and....surrounded by feasting stray cats. Nuff said.

The other involved two 4' diameter helium balloons (pink in color), about a half dozen smaller balloons (various colors), and an M2000 with a lengthened fuse. After tying all the balloons together into one large cluster, the M2000 was attached. Dad climbed the ladder onto the top of the garage (two story building), lit the fuse and let it go. After rising for about 30 feet it caught the wind current and headed for the old neighbor ladies house......yikes! The M2000 exploded directly over her house, ignited the helium in the balloons and made for a spectacular fireball! It also rattled all the windows for several hundred yards in the neighborhood.

She never said a word...even about the large pieces of pink balloon that hung through her pine trees for the next year or so. She's a durable old bugger!!

Ya gotta love living in Smalltown, USA!!

This is too much!- One day ( I think I was 16) I had the bright idea of making a 12 ga shoulder fired mortar. I had an old 12 ga shotgun (only identifying feature was a chicken on the frame, no serial numbers etc.) It was cut back to about a 12 inch barrel due to the incredible amount of pitting and provided us with endless enjoyment. The legality of it never crossed my mind then. I took a 12 ga cast slug ( I think it was a lyman mold) and drilled a hole in it just large enough for a live .22 LR to fit into and epoxied it in place. I then filled the rest of the slug with FFFG black powder and epoxied a cardboard disk in place over the rear. I'd put axel grease on the bottom of the expoxyied round and put them into a plastic wad with the lips cut off. This way I figured the powder ignition would not set off the black powder ala a black powder revolver.I then reloaded a 12ga shell with some relatively light load of red dot and roll crimped the Mortar Round in place. I fired literally hundreds of these things. They could go about 1/4 mile and usually flew pretty straight and detonated impressively on usually any surface. It would blow big holes in wooden planks from point blank range. I always though I'd wind up working for an ordanance development company, but that never happened despite eventually getting a PHD in Organic Chemistry. Funny how life changes.

So...everyone on this forum appears to be a pyromaniac!

I made black powder guns out of pipe, made bombs, attached pounded down Screecharoos to old arrow shafts, and all the good stuff. I even lit a river on fire once...

There is a local welding shop here. On some Friday afternoons, they drink somebeerafter work. then they get out their acetylene cannon...it works like a spud gun, except they fire huge hunks of metal into the mountainside, starting avalanches. I'm surprised theRCMP haven't been called, at times!

Gatehouse, you probably know some of my relatives up there (Van Loon's).

Anyway, that brings up these guys at the gas (compressed) outfit we buy a lot of our oxygen bottles. On slow Friday afternoon's, they had a habit of lining up old charged oxygen bottles on a ramp, and then taking a sledge to knock the fill valve off. The compressed oxygen would turn the bottle into this enormous jet propelled rocket! They never quite made it across the Fraser river, but close!

Seems I've missed out on a lot of fun growing up! Dutch.

Oh, yea. Small rifle or pistol primers out of a break-open .177 caliber pellet gun.

[This message has been edited by Max503 (edited 10-12-2001).]

I was nearly suspended from Highschool after making a .22 pistol in Metalwork (Shop?).
It was an octagonal 3/4" barrel machined round at the breech end and drill through.
The firing mechanism was a 1 1/2" steel with a hole drilled in and squared off that sleeved the machined down barrel.
A welded pistol grip was fitted to the barrel as well as two prongs that held surgical rubber tubes a'la slingshot. The rubber moved the breech block / firing mechinism onto a .22lr round in the barrel.
Load development was halted adn so were we after a teacher caught us trying to shoot rabbits behind the school football oval one afternoon.

There were many other canons etc but this was most memorable.

Turok? Are you from Arkansas originaly? I could be that friend. LOL. The Miller pony bottles worked best for that purpose. But the Galiano wine bottles had em beat for shear power and schrapnel.

Vibe

quote:

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Originally posted by Turok:
A friend of mine used to fill the plastic 5ooml pop bottles half way with dry ice, screw the cap on real tight and chuck it. As the dry ice transforms into a gas, it builds enough pressure to explode the bottle and wake up the rest of the block.

Turok

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We had yet another version of the tennis ball cannon. We would take 4 or 5 tin cans and cut out the tops and bottoms except for the last one, punch some holes in the top of it and a touch hole in the side, duct tape them all together, add a little gasoline and wing it around a bit to turn the gas to vapor, toss in a ball, throw down a match and you may or may not see that ball again.