I love hitting caps with a hammer. We used to sit in the street with a roll of caps and bang away. One day one of us got the bright idea to wack the entire roll as we had several boxes of caps and felt quite rich. My friend had a two-pound sledge and hit the roll really square. The consussion and the flash was more than we had planned on. Thinking back now I am grateful and lucky we did not have an anvil, a six-pounder, and a whole box of caps.
Somehow we got hold of some percussion caps from a friend. His dad shot blackpowder in the hunting season, so I guess he didn't notice if his son took a few.
They fit perfectly in the barrel of our air rifle--we'd shoot them at our metal garbage cans. Wow were we stupid...
Me too! I have a picture of me somewhere when I was about 20 months old cracking walnuts with a claw hammer on the back steps. The horror!
Apparently a precursor of the cap smashing incidents of my pre kindergarten years.
There was some construction going on on our street when I was 8. The crew took a break and left the power shovel sitting on the site, with the open end of the shovel pointing across the street. My older brother took a box of caps, taped it to the head of an 8-pound sledge, and smashed it against the inside of the shovel as hard as he could (at 6' and about 180 pounds).
Deafening. My Lord.
Then we ran like hell, and watched as every light on the street turn on and the cops showed up.