The things kids do........

When I was about 10, I strung a BUNCH of bottle rockets together...about a thousand of them. I thought that tying the fuses to a length of safety fuse would work, and that as the safety fuse burned it would light off the rockets in sequence. But when I set the string of rockets down, it kept falling over, so I rolled it up.
The first couple rockets fired off as I expected, but then the exhaust and sparks lit pretty much all the rest of the fuses...and the whole darn thing lifted up about 5 feet. I don't know whether they all detonated at the same time or just REALLY close together, but I was deaf for three days and there were little red sticks EVERYWHERE.
 
I've made a few "zip" gun's during my troubled youth... A nice wooden grip/frame fashioned during free time in middle school wood shop, a snapped off car antenae for a breach and barrel, and a small dead bolt and a bunch of rubber bands for a firing mechanism. All put to gether in the proper configuration makes a .22 zip gun.
 
Taping 7.62x38R and sometimes even .243 or 7mm Mauser rounds to the end of a beat up old Red Ryder BB gun. Loading it up, reaching it around the corner of the shed and pulling the trigger. BOOM.
Taking a piece of PVC just the right diameter, too where a C02 cartridge can go down it quickly, but relatively airtight, and putting a cap with a nail on one end. Then we would glue a lug to the side near the top and put a cheap Bipod. We would take a full C02 cartridge and wrap some paper around it and glue a fishing weight on top for some extra weight. Then setting it up, we would launch the cartridge farther than we could see across the farmlands. THOOMP! THOOMP! THOOMP!
We also used to fill them with the powder from model rocket engines and flare the nozel some. We would then take a peice of pipe, put it in another and another and drill holes in them for gas bleed outs. We slapped a makeshift breach on the end from whatever we could find. We fed the fuse out the rear and hauled the huge 30-50 pound cannon up on our shoulders. Someone would light it and BOOM. The whole thing would fly out like a bullet with whatever weight we glued on the end. Thing could tear a pine tree to shreds. We then discovered hollow weights, that we would fill with various things in attempts to make tracers. Didn't really work. But sometimes we got a nice flash on the area of impact.
It is incredible what a group of 12 year olds can do with some duct tape and the contents of a junk drawer.
If it wasn't for statute of limitations, I would not discuss this at all.
 
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