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Backyard Ballistics
- mhardcastle 4y agoI made the potato cannon from this book as a teenager. It was made of a PVC chamber for the propellant and a narrower ~potato-sized PVC pipe with the end filed to be sharp so that a potato would be trimmed down to create a potato slug with no air gaps around it. The propellant was hairspray. You'd unscrew a threaded PVC end-cap from the back of the cannon, spray the hairspray into it, screw the cap back on, and ignite with a flint striker from the outside. It was a really cool device.
- JadoJodo 4y agoI built this exact same thing as a teenager. The “thoomp” was very satisfying. Living in an area with a lot of sage brush made me too scared to try the Cincinnati Fire Kite, though.
- youainti 4y agoTried that one as a kid when the fog was really thick. Unfortunately couldn't get it to do much more than fall slowly.
- pengaru 4y agoMade something similar without a book... The best was breach loading a racket ball that wouldn't quite fit into the barrel, but would get stuck enough to not fall away when presented forcefully from the larger combustion chamber side. They flew way farther than potatoes, and exited the barrel with deformations in their ball shape from not quite fitting, making the flight path all sorts of erratic for the first hundred feet or so. We used to take it to a nearby park and get kids to catch and return fly balls by shooting ~vertically for them. You couldn't even see the ball for a good chunk of the flight, good times. Prolly get arrested for such a thing today.
- plastiquebeech 4y agoProlly depends more on where you are than when you are. In a rural area, you're still looking at a pat on the back instead of handcuffs, in the unlikely event that an authority figure notices. In a suburban area, you get cops asking if you could please stop detonating vegetables near your nosy neighbor's property. In a dense city, you might be lucky if you can avoid being shot to death after the first few explosions.
- TheCondor 4y agoI picked up a copy of this a while back and placed it in one of bookshelves to see how long it took my 12 year old to find it. Found it in his room about two weeks later..
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cjsawyer 4y agoThis was one of my favorite books growing up
- walrus01 4y agoI would recommend reading up on what the ATF considers a "destructive device" or "any other weapon" before home building any cannons or similar things. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=atf+definition+destructive+device https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=atf+defin... An ignorant but technically motivated person can also "accidentally" build an NFA form 1 or form 4 firearm by making a short barrelled rifle without the appropriate tax stamp, just by combining pieces together. Or by doing something like putting a vertical foregrip on something that is legally a pistol. Or by making a home-made silencer. And so on.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago> Or by making a home-made silencer My father made 3 of these in the 1980s for 3 different caliber pistols. We later disassembled them out of fear.
- hahajk 4y agoIsn't there a "homemade gun" scene that operates on the idea that a weapon whose resources are collected in a single state, and that is assembled is that state, is not subject to federal firearm restrictions? (Since many if not most federal regulations rely in the commerce clause)
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI don’t know. But silencers are not guns and are outlawed federally.
- thetopher 4y agoI recently found this book in a used bookstore. I wish I had owned a copy when I was a kid. I’m thinking about giving one to my nephew, but I’m not sure what his parents would think.
- AlbertCory 4y agoThere's also The Dangerous Book for Boys