Oh, sweet arsenal of my youth
Mixing Bangsite with water made an explosive gas. Some kids had Bangsite cannons, heavy cast iron things that were relatively safe to use.
Normal kids took a metal baking soda can and punched a nail hole through the bottom. This turned the can into a three-man, crew-served weapon.
11 comments:
Outstanding...it certainly takes me back.
As kids, we'd do chemistry experiments using stuff we found around the house. One of the favourites involved mixing two products together and we produced a green, foamy , expanding substance that I later found out was essentially poison gas....colorful though.
Surprised we made it through childhood.
Also I remember with great affection ..."fireworks experiments"; specifically involving cannon-crackers. The 24th of May was THE best time of the year as the stores would have enough firecrackers to qualify as armouries.
If I recall, we went to Lloyd Andersons Garage and got carbide from his welding unit. If you tin canned it, and threw it in the river it'd make a hell of a bang. If you did it in a swamp you could get ripple fire from the methane
/swamp gas when it went off.
In our case it was cannon crackers packed in mud filled with small stones that could be lobbed at the "enemy" when playing war. In the winter snow replaced the mud. Remember chemistry sets; the kid next door blew out his bedroom window and set the curtains on fire. Or how about playing sandlot football where those of us who didn't have football cleats would file our steel-cleated baseball shoes to a sharp edge before every game. It was fun.
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knew a guy who had somehow acquired a flare pistol... in 12 gauge... and, yes... of course he did.
put his hand around the corner of a building to take the first test shot... the reasoning being, if things went bad... he would only lose a hand.
try tell me there's no difference between boys & girls... i dare you.
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Ah yes, the 12 Ga. flare pistols...
I was never stupid enough to try and fire a real 12 Ga. shotgun shell out of a flimsy plastic pistol, but a friend of mine did try and fire a flare out of his 12 ga. shotgun.
It was a full choke shotgun, meaning that the barrel tighened a bit at the muzzle to keep tight shot patterns for long range shooting. Flares, however did not have the energy for long barrels, never mind full-choke long barrels.
The flare stuck in the barrel at the muzzel and burned away, turning the tip of the barrel cherry red hot. Just before it burned out, the flare exploded, sending sparks all over his backyard which we had to run around stomping out before they set fire to anything.
Best 4th of July in the USA, ever!
I can remember my brother and I running around my granfathers house (in the city) shooting off peletless pelet guns at each other. Now-a-days the SWAT team would be called in for kids playing soldier games with toy guns.
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"jim pook says... a real 12 Ga. shotgun shell out of a flimsy plastic pistol"
nope... metal flare gun... still, not made for shotgun loads.
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I think I had most of those, er, weapons on that page.
Considering that currently it is illegal to actually fire my kid's nerf gun in the city (spring loaded guns are illegal in most cities), I fear for our children.
My elder brother got hold of a 12 ga cartridge. He was smart enough to remove the pellets before he "loaded" it in Dad's machinist's vice and fired it with a hammer and a finishing nail punch. He was not aware of the wadding and a nice hole appeared in the drywall of the workshop. We had two hours to patch and repaint before Dad came home.
My uncle brought back a a German Kamph Pistole from the war, and we had a great time firing flares out of that baby..it was meant to fire a rifle grenade ( rifled barrel flare pistol) and we could accurately aim flares at anything we aimed at!
Cannon cracker in one end of a piece of pipe ,(threaded with a cap on one end was the best), allie in the other, we had great fun firing into cement basement walls. For the maximum ricohet effect, steelies were used. Of course we caught proper hell when our parents came home as the house reeked of burnt black powder, it smelled like.....the Devil's armpit! Then there were the long folding fishing knives modified with flattened BB's to make switchblades. Every guy in a 3 mile radius had one, never for nefarious reasons, just because it was cool seeing them open.
They did have a tendency to operate "on their own" if one carried the knife with the blade under tension....as more than a few pairs of blue jeans bore witness.
Being a little scud was fun.
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