6 ms·
At the prison I was in (northern Indiana), dice were banned as "tools for gambling" -- yet playing cards were OK. Yea, it didn't make sense to any of the staff
by stryk 9y ago
At the prison I was in (northern Indiana), dice were banned as "tools for gambling" -- yet playing cards were OK. Yea, it didn't make sense to any of the staff either.
We carved our own out of bars of "state soap" (the cheap Barker brand inmate soap that gets distributed in just about every institution). We carved out the little divots on each side for the numbers and used Kool-Aid to stain them. Some of the older guys who had been incarcerated for a long time were so good at making them[1] that they were damn near indistinguishable from the real thing until you felt them of course (they were made out of soap after all). They actually rolled fairly true as well.
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1: they could also carve out some very intricate chess pieces. I mean these were damn near works of art. You couldn't use state soap for those though, it's far too thin and brittle. You needed the good Ivory-brand stuff from the commissary.
- NeonVice 9y agoWhat did they carve with?
- kolpa 9y agoWe carved our own knives out of bars of "state soap" .
- mulmen 9y agoWho carved the first soap knife and what tool did they use?
- ofcourseianal 9y agowhoosh
- mratzloff 9y agoIt's bars of soap all the way down.
- ryacko 9y agotoenails
- stryk 9y agoI can only speak for what I saw done first-hand. Some guys used their own shanks/shivs/whatever you want to call it, basically any old piece of metal. This was obviously done in their cells on their own. Much more frequently [and out in the open] though was guys using the plastic butter "knives" that came in the dinner trays (think KFC, individually wrapped sets of 1 plastic spork, 1 wetnap, and 1 plastic butter knife with a kinda serrated edge - though still dull as all hell). For doing the divots we used the end-tip of the long piece on the cap of a typical old-school style Bic pen - this worked extremely well and quick.
- LoSboccacc 9y agoyou had bics? like these? http://webcuriosita.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/penna-bic.jpg http://webcuriosita.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/penna-bic.... at school we used those as dices directly, notches on each of their six sides, making them roll in a bunch was random enough.
- stryk 9y agoClose, but they were more the "older" style Bic pens from WAY back in the days. These: http://www.bonvan.com/images/up_images/officepen/229.jpg http://www.bonvan.com/images/up_images/officepen/229.jpg The end of the piece that sticks out from the cap worked just like a tiny plastic shovel