Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Firecracker guns

How did we all keep our fingers? LOL.

Throwing lit firecrackers. Lighting firecrackers with a match in left hand. Match burned down, lit another match, held in right hand, lit firecracker, threw match. BAM. Pretty well peeled my left thumb.

Topic for a book in my life. ;-{>8

It does make you wonder how more of us didn't get seriously hurt. My next door neighbor lost half his hand when as a kid he found a blasting cap and had it go off in his hand.

My adopted grand dad blew off the complete index finger, most of his middle finger and the first joint of his ring finger on his right hand, when he was about 10 with a carbide cannon he loaded with black powder.

Kept him out of the trenches in France.

Iron pipe, still have the pipe cap from the one Dad made for me. Silver Salutes, M80's, Cherry Bombs, and railroad torpedo's. Add a Daisy and a Sheridan and we go back to when the world was round and right

Wood shop in the 7th grade, turned on wood lathe a 16"x3" cannon barrel made a 4 wheel carriage for it. Used the wood turned barrel as a mold to cast a barrel in aluminum in the metal shop foundry. Turned and bored it 3/4" on metal lathe.

Won first prize in the 7th Grade Industrial Arts for projects, was on on display in the schools lobby.

The summer between 7th and 8th grade, would take Black Cat firecrackers apart put powder down the barrel, used 3/4" steel ball bearing found in scrap metal behind a local shop. Got caught by Pop's shooting it into a telephone pole. It disappeared after that 49 years ago, never asked what happen to it.

Summer, Age 12, ....on a lathe in the engine room of one of Dad's ships,....Bronze and Steel.
There were no hardwoods on the ship that I could find, ...strong enough to handle the recoil generated with match heads, so I genned one up out of 1/4 " plate.
When we hit Panama's Rio Pedregal, the trading post sold BP, for the local Indios "Escopetas", and I scored, big time.
Learend to lash it down on a fair sized plank, and harrassed countless Seagulls off the stern boat deck.
Shot a LOT of home brewed BP, once I hit the beach for winter schooling.
1/2" bore
Touch hole's eroded, it could stand to be bushed.
Parent's kept it on their mantle for many years, It made it's way back to me not all that long ago.

we use 3/4 black pipe a 12 gauge shell will fit in perfect then screw a cap with a hole drilled in it over the shell, this is mounted to a board with a rat trap hooked to it, and a trip wire to the trap. the rat trap hits a nail in the cap that fires the 12 gauge shell. my brother and i would set these up on hog trails.

This happen to a couple friends of mine too. Brothers, playing with Caps and one went off. Milt lost three fingers and Joe lost an eye from one of Milt's fingers. They were pretty young at the time so I am not sure they even knew what the Caps were.

Back in those days there was a lot of mining going on around the area so caps and Dynamite were easy to buy, there was some in just about everyone's shed. They were just considered as a necessary tool for pulling stumps, making roads, small scale mining and Etc.

An Adult should have taken better care about storage in this case.

What? No mention of potato guns?

Can or wd40 or cheap hair spray, 10lb sack of russets.

Lol...the best I have played with came pretty much ready to fire. They make a tool used in mounting Big Rig Tires we call an "Air Blast". The most Common brand is "Cheetah", It is a 5 Gallon Air Tank with a 2 1/2" Butterfly Valve and tube designed to instantly blast 5 Gallons of Air into a Tire to pop the bead up against the rim to make it take air. We take the tube out and thread in a longer piece of pipe. these are mean!

Actually...I still break this out now and then.

We used to shoot yard eggs with a potato cushion wad out of our potato gun! Direct lay on German neighbors Mercedes shop on back of his place. Hated that nazi bastid. He could [bleep] up a soup sandwich. Built his shop in middle of run off flood plain. But he knew what he was doing!!! Dummace!

Many times the eggs held together very well!!!! Especially when the hens had a good dose of oyster shell!!!

We used to make "grenades"...small fruits & vegetables...take a nail & create a pocket for the firecracker. We also got creative with the high end skyrockets...my younger brother got in a bunch of trouble when he was about 8 years old. He laid one in the street, pointed at the house across the street, lit it & the damn thing went straight through their front screen door & blew up in their living room while they were watching TV...

This is what we grew up messing with. A friend of mine was at a party one night and some guys were messing around with a potato gun in the barn. One guy shot it out the barn door just as my buddy was walking by and hit him square in the side of the head. When he woke up, he knocked the kid out.

Reread the thread-they were discussed.

Bastid !

Coffee, Nose,.....

Never tried a fire cracker gun but can tell you that a blasting cap will blow a vice through the side of a barn

I took an expended co2 cartridge, cut off the rounded bottom and then drilled out the neck for a "touch hole". I had a piece of pipe with the inside diameter of a golf tee, then taped it so it would just fit inside the cut open co2 cartridge. Some more tape and then taped it to a piece of 2x4.

If you held it vertical a firecracker fuze would fall through the hole. Marbles were really good ammo. You couldn't see them in flight. One time I put a golf tee in it and from about a foot away it almost buried itself in an oak tree.

We had another piece of that same pipe that we'd stick it in the ground. Then we'd knock the primer of a fired 20 gauge shotgun shell. We dropped a firecracker into the shell fuze first, and then bend the fuze to hold it in place as we put the shell down over the pipe. The first time we fired it we watched to see it come down and when no one saw it we looked at each other like, "where'd it go?" Several seconds later we heard it hit the street about 200 yards away.

Lots of good clean fun and fortunately or luckily no one got hurt.