If it bangs, twangs, pops or snaps...

C

Cliff

New member
It is good.
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The subject addresses, in order:

A) Firearms
B) Bow (long, recurve, compound or cross)
C) Pneumatic (BB guns, pellet rifles, etc.)
D) Sling shots

From reading posts, many TFL'ers have experience in all four of these projectile expelling/launching food groups.

What fun (non-firearm) of these have you used?

One of mine - "Wrist Rocket" sling shot. The handle folded - good concealed 'snapper'... ammo of choice, 00 buckshot or ball bearings.

Cliff
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I like the tatergun, too.
Don't foget the rubberband guns we used to whittle with the pocketknife that we NEVER left at home, but took EVERYWHERE.
Love my recurves, too!
 
Yeh the homemade slingshot was fun and it also was a great teacher getter when used with paper wods in class. LOL
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But of course I was never too onry to do that. LOL
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WHEN IT COMES TO FRIENDS THE SKY IS NOT THE LIMIT

[This message has been edited by terridarri (edited April 21, 2000).]
 
When I was about 10 or so, my Dad was giving me a "lesson" on auto care by letting me help him change the oil in his car. You know, one of those farther-son Kodak moments. When we finished with the car we had a small pile of 6 empty oil cans (yes kids, motor oil used to come in a real live metal can). As any dutiful son would, I asked ole' Dad what was to be done with the cans? Well, he just got this sort of wicked grin on his face and said, "Why don't you go round up a can opener, a bottle opener, and a punch". Not knowing what was in store, but also trying to dodge a "lesson" in grass mowing, I went into the house and found the items he'd asked for. When I came back out I noticed Dad had gotten a roll of duct tape and some lighter fluid from the garage (some of you may know where this is going). Dad went to work on the oil cans, cuting various secret patterns in the top and bottom of each one. Once done with his metal work, he asked for the duct tape and began assembly of what my Mom would latter call simply, "That damn thing".
I'm still not sure of the exact order of the combustion chambers in "the thing", but I do recall that the last two cans on the end were cut top and bottom to form a tube, and the first can was cut out at the top with a flash-hole the size of a phillips screwdriver in the very bottom. The middle three chambers had a series of triangular holes cut both top and bottom with one of those juice can openers.
Well, Dad got this thing put togehter and found one of dog's old tennis balls, which he asked me to hold for a second. He fliped this device over, opened the cap on the lighter fluid and proceded to empty about half of it into the bottom chamber. At this point, he picked up "the thing" and turned it end to end letting that lighter fluid spread and vapor up real good. He then planted the butt of "the thing" in the ground at slight angle, told me to drop in the tennis ball, which I did, and stuck a match to the flash-hole. BAWOOM! An air cannon. That tennis ball flew about 200ft in the air accompanied by a very impressive fire ball and one of those concussive sounds that give you a warm "I think I'm gonna' pee myself feeling".

I think that was the first and last time I ever saw my Mother run as she came flying from the house to if there were any pieces of us left. I also think that was the most upset I've ever seen Mom get. She used some words I would only later learn the meanings of
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I don't think the gleeful laughter that neither I or my Father could hold back helped her mood much.

We never shot the air cannon again after that......At leat not when Mom was home
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Tom Whitman
SSgt, USAF
 
In junior high school, I was into

-Bow hunting/shooting (Ben Pearson Equalizer Jr compound bow)
-Blowguns
-Air guns
-(to some extent) Miniature cannons, knives, & small expolosives improvised from fireworks.

I never got any game with a bow or blowgun, despite my efforts. But I have taken many a birdie with the airguns, though (Starlings & Pigeons are 5 points, Grackles-10 pts, Blue Jays-15 pts, Crows & Ravens-50 pts, Tweetie bird-lose 5 points
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)

Way back in grade school, I got my start with ninja throwing stars, slingshots, and a Daisy airgun.

[This message has been edited by Futo Inu (edited April 21, 2000).]
 
I like to paintball, it shoots so it counts, for those of you who haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. Lots of fun.

I learned to throw knives pretty good several years ago, but it has been a long time since I've tried it. I could only hit stationary targets, like our barn door.

And of course the BB gun, had a daisy, and then some really old wicked cool one that belonged to my dad when he was a kid, never knew what brand it was because all the lettering was worn off.

AFshooter, the air cannon sounds really really cool.
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a "Davids" sling,
two leathers thongs with a patch in the middle..... can throw a rock several hundred feet with fair accuracy and speed.....still have one in my field kit.....
 
Model 1377 pump air pellet pistol, with Daisy laser sight. Pumped to 1.5 times the manufacturer's recommendation.
After dusk, no cat or crow is safe.
In England, you need a firearms license for one.
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A story similar to what AF was telling. One of my uncles used to take a 4' section of 4" mild steel pipe, and a 6" soft rubber ball.
He'd jam the pipe into the ground, light M80's, Cherry Bombs, whatever had enough "pop" to launch the ball.
There were times the ball would go completely ouit of sight, and you could see a smoke ring chase the ball for aways.

Another time, we'd taken some smaller hedge balls, and performed a similar task. Only instead of launching in the air, we'd launch at old junker cars in a farm dump..

Some kinda fun.



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The most foolish mistake we could make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerers who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall.
Adolf Hitler
 
When I was in middle school and the early years of high school I was quite fond of those Bic Clic mechanical pencils. Not only because they were darn good for taking notes and so forth, but they also were readily transformable into a single shot BB gun.

First you must remove the shaft that holds the eraser and that you press on to advance the graphite. Simply grasp the body of the pencil and pull on the shaft. It may take a pair of pliers, but it can usually be removed with fingers alone. When you remove this piece, there will be two flimsey little prongs, break these off. Next, remove the eraser without damaging the cup that it sits in. With a decent knife, exacto's work well, cut two notches into the cup so that they are directly across from each other.

Now to the outer housing (the part with the pocket clip). If you look closely at the area where you grip the pencil, you will see that the 'nose-cone' of the pencil can be twisted back and forth. Break this 'nose-cone' off where it meets the body of the pencil (you may need pliers or a knife). With the nose-cone gone, use a knife to ream out the end of the body a bit so that the edges are fairly clean. Now drop the eraser shaft you removed earlier into the pencil body, like it would ordinariy be. It should be able to move freely within the body of the pencil, in fact the bottom of the eraser cup on the shaft should fit flush with the body.

Now find a decent rubber band, ideally one that is fairly stiff, approximately the length of the body or a little shorter and at least 1/8" wide. Stretch the rubber band over the ends of the body, kind of like a bikini cap for a scope. Using either masking or duct tape, tape around the rubber band and pencil about 1/4" back from the end where the nose-cone was. Wrap it at least 3-4 times, one layer on top of the other. Pull the rubber band off the tip of the body near the tape and just let it stay there. Next put the eraser shaft, with the notches, back into the body and pull the rubber band over the end so it fits into the notches.

Finally find an appropriate sized projectile of your choice, BB's, pellets, and even some spit-wads work great, drop it in the end, pull back the eraser shaft plunger and commence to raising some hell!

I apolgize if this was too long, more than you wanted to know, etc....but I couldn't help myself....brought back some fond memories....AAHHHhhh, such fun!
 
Years and years ago some friends and I built a one half scale working model of a Roman catapult. This was the Roman equivalent of field artillery. Each Roman Legion had 55. It shot a four and one halffoot long spear like projectile which would have been nine feet long in the fukk size version, It was fairly accurate and had remarkable penetration. You could see where the expression "to get the shaft" came from!
 
Donny & AF:

Remember steel soda and food cans? Similiar to what your talking about, only use Zippo fluid and tennis balls.

Ever see a flaming tennis ball go flying across the night sky?
Of course putting out the fire in the back forty ain't too much fun.
 
Paper cartridge 12 gauge shotgun shells. Cut almost all of the way thru the paper above the brass portion of the shell all of the way around.
Shoot holding shotgun elevated and at waist level.
I once scared a coyote half to death from a 1/4 mile away with this dangerous trick. Never did hit him but got to shoot at him about 6 times before I stung him with some buckshot. Him being on a freshly plowed field helped a lot with our ARTILLERY spotting.
The things you get away with when your young.
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Paintball was a lot of fun. I played a lot in high school, but that ended right after I got caught on top of school gym during a basketball game. See, my ROTC company used to hold night-time CQB drills on the rooftops during games and other functions (it's more fun if you have a 'live' target and hence more danger of getting caught). Drills often included lessons in rappelling, first aid & triage, radio & silent comms and 2- & 3-man room clears. If we could find it in the company's FM/TM library, we tried it.

We would use paintball guns (old refurbed Nel-Spots) for sidearms and rifles. For artillery we had water balloons filled with Coke & shaving cream launched from a two-person surgical tubing slingshot: you haven't lived till you've nailed the football captain's convertible with a couple of these babies! LAW's & RPG's were simulated with the aforementioned tennis-ball launchers, filled with lighter fluid propellant and tennis ball bombs of cannon fusing with a dash of smokeless powder. Hand grenades consisted of old .410 & 20g rounds with the shot replaced by non-dairy coffee creamer and a marble duct-taped to the primer.

We carried out training exercises like this for 2 1/2 years. Basketball games, football, wrestling.... You name it; everything but the school dances (come on, we were still teenage guys!). We were young, dumb and extremely ignorant as to the laws governing explosive devices. It amazes me to this day that we didn't get caught (til that last time anyway), we didn't hurt anybody and they didn't press charges except for trespassing (and the judge threw that one out because we were students there). After all was said and done, we got 1 week's off-campus suspension.

Like I said: we were young and dumb, but man it was fun!


--- JeepBear Out ---
http://www.freespeech.org/rkba
Carpe Diem. Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum.


[This message has been edited by JeepBear (edited April 22, 2000).]
 
When I was in Gitmo West, during Operation "Whatever" in Haiti (we flew out of Gitmo), we devised an airburst device that consisted of an empty 2 liter plastic Pepsi or Coke bottle with pieces of MRE heater tabs stuck down in it and water added. It's intended to warm up the MRE and make it more edible. The pressure builds up until the bottle bursts.

Still working on the timing. We had a few premature high order blasts chunking them from the top of the building we were in. That water gets hot.

While we were there we also made the mistake of firing a potato cannon at a couple of the guys in the rifle platoon that were out for PT. They were about 150 yds away. They just stopped, looked back our way and you could see them talking. They went inside their barracks and came out with a crew-served potato cannon! Holy Sh!t! That sucker had a tip-up long range sight and outriggers to point it and a big-assed tripod. They tipped up a can of fuel and must have dumped a quart of something in the ignition chamber. All four of 'em shook it around and then set it down and sighted it. You could hear one of 'em calling firing commands. WHOOMPH! I swear, a couple of loaves of that Cuban bread, a cantelope looking thing and a little plastic bucket came at us ... musta been doin 50-100 fps. WHAAAM! into the side of the building, OVER OUR HEADS. GAWDAMIGHTY! We scattered.

We didn't fool around with those guys anymore. They were ROTGLTDAO! Damned marines like to killed us! JEEZ! We later found out that they used a plastic bucket that fit the bore (6 in) of the cannon and they used the bread for a cushion behind the melon and all that was in the plastic can! A friggin' 6 inch slug!

[This message has been edited by sensop (edited April 22, 2000).]
 
When I was a lad in grade school (ten years ago) we had tennis ball cannons. We'd shoot them at my brother. he was our street hockey goalie. Of course he had pads on (just no cup.)

My favorite bb launcher is easy to make
First cut the spout off of a 2 liter bottle of soda. Make sure that the big round lip is on the cut off piece. Put a ballon over the lip. Insert bbs and pull back balloon. Instant scattergun. Bee-utiful job.
I did a lot of stuff with pyrodex and radioshack electronics too.
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Shhhhhh.
My dad might be around.

I miss those homemade weapons.
Jeepster
 
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