So fess up-who played around with these? Dad used to make them for us. A piece of lead pipe, threaded on one end, about 8-12" long. Mount it in a crude wooden pistol stock. The back end of the pipe was threaded, and he'd cut a slot in one side. Put a firecracker in that end with the fuse sticking out through the slot, screw a plug in behind it. Mount an empty shotgun shell on the other end, point it at something, like a garbage can, and light the fuse. With good firecrackers, if you could actually hit it, you'd cave in the whole side of a metal garbage can. We used to drag 'em out when we'd see a red squirrel in the back yard and lay seige to them up in the trees. I shot a branch right out from under one one time, and my brother actually hit one in the belly with one. Blew it in two. Man, those were fun to screw around with. Reminds me of the tennis ball and pumpkin cannons.

Never those...wish I had known about them. Used to play with big Propane / Acetylene Cannons though.

Threaded steel pipe, pipe cap with hole drilled through. Put in firecracker, screw cap on, stuff a piece of newspaper down the muzzle, add hand full of pea gravel, another piece of newspaper on top, fire away. Had to watch for paper catching on fire.

A 2"er, those red paper ones with the green waterproof fuses, make a hell of a cannon.

News Flash...

15 year old Male teenager arrested today and charged with possession and manufacturing of explosive devices and is now being investigated for possible Domestic Terrorist acts.

More Terrifying News coming up at 11:00...

I made mortars. Pipes that fit marbles, golf balls and ball bearings were angled into the ground and used to shoot out into the lake for distance. Sometimes we'd skip them across new ice just for the sound effects.

Those old Kentucky rifle play guns that used to shoot cork round balls used to make decent shotguns when loaded with a couple of fire crackers and a wad of BB's in a bit of rolled up paper towel...

When I was a kid and got caught by the Law doing something like this it would have been "You Boys be careful with that alright?" "and whatever you do don't shoot old lady Elma's Cat that she called us twice last week to pull out of a Tree...(Wink)". lol

An old friend of mine did that with an m80, his father took him to the hospital to get his hand sewn back together. Sometimes we pay for dumb things we did.

My brother and I got in some trouble shooting crabapples out of bike handlebars at passing cars with firecrackers.

I prefer not to think about some other experiments in my youth that make me shiver now.

I met a guy one time who made "Firecrackers" for the tip of his Arrows.

That's pretty good. lol

One of the joys of juvenile delinquency: Estes ballistic missiles.

he's lucky to have a hand to sew back together!

REAL M80's were awesome.

One od my favorite toys as a kid!!! I blew up my old Davy Crockett model like that with a overcharge of powder from the old Black Cat firecrackers. Good Times!

Firecracker guns sound like they would have been fun. Me and a bud took apart a 22 pellet rifle and rechambered it with pa's drill to hold 22lr, wasn't very accurate but it was fun.

Aw now that just sounds downright fun!

We used to make those tennis ball cannons. Cut both ends out of a bunch of tin cans, and get out the duct tape. Tape em all together, and then tape one to the end with the bottom still in it. Drill a hole in the bottom can. Put lighter fluid,or a squirt of hair spray in the tube, stick a light to the hole in the bottom can, and get a big POOF! When we got really high tech, we'd mount an electric fire starter to the bottom can at the flash hole so we could use the trigger to ignite it. You could shoot an apple pretty darned far out of these Rube Goldberg contraptions.

BTDT. They'll shoot a marble a hell of a distance. Bottle rockets in a coke bottle fly like heck too. Also made arrow tips that detonated primers which detonated powder and blew the living crap out of everything they hit, but the cost of arrows soon put a stop to that exercise. Don't even remember how we did it now...

If you soaked the tennis ball with lighter fluid first you could shoot flaming balls.

We used to take empty CO2 capsules, like for Crosman air guns. Cut the heads off matches, maybe 3 packs. Stick each head into the capsule. Use one match as a fuse. Slide it into a cardboard or metal "barrel". Aim, light, and shoot! Goes for nearly 70 yards if aimed correctly.

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.

rockingbbar: "Those old Kentucky rifle play guns that used to shoot cork round balls used to make decent shotguns when loaded with a couple of fire crackers and a wad of BB's in a bit of rolled up paper towel.."

Yessir! I had one of those play Kentucky rifles.
It had a place where you could put a cap, like from a cap gun. Then you put a cork ball down the barrel.
The power of the cap would shoot the ball about 40 feet.

I got 5 black cat firecrackers and poured the powder down the barrel. It was a very fine, silvery powder, almost like dust.
I found a marble that fit the bore real well, it was about a .45 caliber bore. Didn't use a patch didn't know about that.
I knew that the thing was liable to blow up. I wedged the rifle in a bush. I tied a 30 foot string to the trigger and got back about 28 feet.
The rifle was aimed at the neighbor's concrete block foundation.
I pulled the trigger and it fired! Big cloud of smoke, big big bang.
I went over to the neighbor's house and there was a one inch hole in a concrete block.

The gun didn't blow up, nor even swell up much.

This thread should be self explanatory to antigunners about why taking all the Guns away will be a futile action. lol

We were making our own when we were 10!

I learned how to make hydrogen. You get a glass one quart coke bottle, put in 2 tbsp Red Devil lye, and put in five or six strips of aluminum foil.
Add 4 oz. water and it starts to foaming and it makes hydrogen.
Get a big balloon and put it over the top of the bottle, in a few minutes you have a hydrogen balloon.

I knew about the Hindenburg.
I got 3 of those balloons and tied them together. I made a gondola of aluminum foil, and tied it to the balloons.
In the gondola I put a lit cigarette, and stuck a cherry bomb into the cigarette near the filter.

Launched the little flying bomb, and up it went. Had to get the binoculars out but it was up about 500 feet, and about 1/2 mile away when it blew.
There was a flash, and then a big explosion. Real big.
But no noise. It took several seconds for the noise to be heard.

This was in 1965 right near Peachtree DeKalb Airport in Atlanta. I hate to think, if a kid got caught doing that today, they would have me down at Gitmo getting waterboarded.

LOLOLOL

Back in the fifties, we made pistols that shot marbles out of a piece of 1/2" water pipe. Standard Black Cats put marbles out of sight. Would put a marble thru plain old dutch siding!

Im missing it somewhere. Maybe you send me some crestor so I can see it.

I was thinking more along the lines of Preparation H.............

For a junior high science project, three of us made a firecracker cannon. We got one member's father to weld shut the end of a piece of pipe, weld on legs so we could anchor it in the ground, and drill a hole to coax the fuse through when the firecracker was dropped down the barrel. The premise was to measure how far firecrackers (illegal in Iowa, by the way) of different sizes/makes would propel a ball bearing. This was to be measured by the puff of dust raised on the football field when the bearing contacted the ground. The class was taken out to the field, we loaded the device and fired it off, with a very distinct puff of dust appearing down the field. Things went well until we reached the point where no puff appeared. Since the city well building was in the park across the road from the field, further shots were terminated at that point. Can you imagine such an experiment being sanctioned and carried out today?

When I was a paramedic in Georgia, 20 years ago, we used to have bottle rocket battles.
Firecrackers are illegal in Georgia but that was no problem, on a trip to Tennessee, I would pick up the ammo.
I would buy 10 gross of bottle rockets, that is, 10 packs of 144 rockets.
Then, I would buy several dozen roman candles.

We would get 10 paramedics out in a field at night. Each man had a gross of rockets and about 6 roman candles.
Had to make a launching tube, a 3 foot piece of one inch metal pipe. Had to wrap the tube with newspaper and hold it on with duct tape because that tube got really hot.

All troops had to wear protective goggles. Alcohol was involved.

Damn, that was fun, running around on the battlefield at midnight shooting all those rockets. You were in trouble, you were standing there near enemy lines lighting your bottle rocket, an unseen enemy from 10 feet away, kneeling down, he lit up a roman candle and started firing at you. The roman candle fired on "full auto" and that was a real threat. Probably time to retreat. Believe me, a roman candle ball right in the face really hurts.
Damn, that was some fun. The wives were disgusted, they said "Y'all boys are out there in the meadow at midnight acting like a bunch of children!"

Baloons filled with Methane gas work about same..

Ouch!

Methane's HEAVIER than air.

GTC

When I was 10 I traded a neighborhood boy an old camera I had found at the dump for an Arisaka rifle his dad had brought home from the war. I discovered that some ball bearing I scrounged up that were a close fit to the bore and a lit firecracker dropped in behind it with the bolt quickly slammed shut was a lot of fun.

Had one tip over one time and blast me right in the shin bone. That hurt like a mo fo! I can't imagine getting hit in the face with one.

I'm a 'tater gun fella, myself.

We used an old trapdoor from "Ye Olde Hunter" when the original balloon head BP ammo we bought with it ran out. (The Rifle and ammo were sent to us via USPS.)
"Black Cats" were the charge of choice
Fishing sinkers hammered round, and greased worked well.

GTC