boys being curious, and adventurous, which is their nature.
We made cannons as kids, but they were made from used soup cans and the propellent was lighter fluid or gasoline. This boy took it to a much higher and more dangerous level.
Flaming tennis balls...
We used to make matchstick rockets as kids. Just sneak some aluminum foil from mom, wrap the tip, cook it, and watch it fly. We were thrilled when it did, which was about one time in 100. Ah, the simple joy of playing with matches.
PVC pipe, hair spray, golf ball.
No window was safe.
L
Before I got around to proper black powder cannons I made a really large carbide cannon with electric ignition. It shot apples really well. I later attached a tank of hydrogen and was able to achieve fairly rapid rates of fire. One evening the local police came by and confiscated it.
My dad had to pick it up at the station a few days later, giving a promise that I’d only shoot it in the daytime. He said that it was quite the talk of the station.
Darwin awards are hard earned
Agreed. Most boys of my generation did things like this to one degree or another...at least the boys I knew.
I often think I was lucky to make it to adulthood. Many kids don’t have a chance to learn from their stupidity.
We used tennis ball cans with a small hole we put near the bottom, plus lighter fluid as propellant. What fun.
The dumbest thing a friend and I did when we were 13 was to make our own hang glider with aluminum poles and thick plastic sheets. We didn’t manage to get very far off the ground, but if we’d had a better design or a big gust of wind, and had gotten 20 or 30 ft in the air, that might have been lethal. Ah, well, the Wright brothers had to start somewhere.
Kid could have had a grand old time with a potatoe gun & hair spray for propellant.
Yep - used to make my own black powder and had different grades/burning speeds depending on whether it was to be used as fuse /cannon/something to just go boom and splatter cardboard casing all over the place - NEVER stayed next to any of my “experiments” when the “BOOM” was gonna happen - always took some sort of cover even if it was only a garbage can brought out for the purpose - usually hid behind trees in the wood where most of the “experiments” were held...