Dangerous games for boys

[xoggoth]

Made a sugar and soidum chlorate gun from some old pipe, fired with a wire from an iron element attached to battery. It would probably have been pretty lethal although it was pretty hard to actually hit anything.

[hyperD]

I was about 11 and was attempting to help this older kid build a makeshift gun out of a steel tube. He was a bit of a nutter this kid but that didn't stop us hanging out with him for laughs.

He crimped one end of the tube, made a small touch hole and fuse, filled it with gunpowder (from bangers or fireworks, can't remember) and put a handful of small ball bearings in there. He secured this in the ground and pointed it at his elderly neighbours fence. He peered over the fence to see if it was clear.

Instinctively, I thought this was pretty dangerous so cowered behind the tree. He kept trying to light the fuse but nothing was happening for ages.

Suddenly, a HUGE explosion caught him and he swore and flew to the ground as the makeshift canon fired. It was the loudest noise I'd ever heard and made a huge flash and I was crapping myself. The neighbour's fence had been peppered with ball bearings.

Next thing we knew, his elderly neighbour's ashen face had appeared over the fence and she said "Are you alright, John?". FFS, she had only been in the garden doing the gardening when the gun had gone off.... very, very lucky and the poor dear hadn't a clue...

[TimberWolf]

I'm reminded of the saying that you begin in life with a big bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick to to fill the bag of experiernce before you empty the bag of luck. Growing up seems like that. On many, many occasions things could easily have turned out very differently.

[Zippy]

We tried making gunpowder but couldn't get a decent explosion out of it.

Surfing down steep hills on tea trays (or bits of cardboard).

[EternalOptimist]

The local toughs went through a phase of building rafts on the canal. They would arm themselves with cudgels, bows and arrows, and play pirates all day instead of going to school.
The trick was to batter the enemy before your raft disintegrated, which was inevitable, given the materials and ship-building skills we had.
Everyone knew, that a good raft would mean victory, even over the toughs.

Then my mate, who lived by the canal, told us about this Vat he had found. It was a massive fibre glass struture that bobbled about on the surface of the cut. He reckoned that if we got in it, acting like ballast, it would be stable. It was . We battered those louts, thugs , layabouts and toughs. We were unsinkable.

[conned tractor]

I didn't make anything that good but my old man tells stories of blowing up his dads cabbages - not sure what he used, I will ask him at dinner in a bit. Apparantly his dad, my grandad, was not too pleased.

Right, found ou it was a tunderflash that blew up his dads cabbages. Apparantly it is usually used in a rather ristricted environment in training exercises.

[hyperD]

Right, found ou it was a tunderflash that blew up his dads cabbages. Apparantly it is usually used in a rather ristricted environment in training exercises.

Yeah, saw a steel WW2 army helmet placed over a thunderflash and watched it launch 100ft in the air. Impressive incendaries.