For Old Guys Only

[tooljunkie]

the can thing i remember,cards in the spokes was a favorite.
carbide-no. never played with that.

steel juice cans,ends cut off in the can opener,enough stacked and taped for about a three foot cannon,left end on bottom can,and punched a hole for a kleenex.
tennis ball wedged in the other end.
bit of gas,in can and light the kleenex.

predates the potato cannon by about 30 years.

 

[2door]

Tennis ball canons?
You had to use steel soda cans, which they don't make anymore, but you cut the bottoms out of three and taped them together, stacked and punched a small hole in the side at the bottom of the bottom can. You give it a squirt of Ronson's Lighter Fluid, stuff a tennis ball down in the top can and hold a match to the small hole.
Those things would launch a tennis ball almost out of sight, IF, you get the fuel air mixture just right.

I wouldn't try that today with aluminum cans. That would be a pipe bomb, not a cannon.

Tom

 

[2door]

LOL, TJ. Great minds think alike

To

EDIT: I actually still have one. I'll go take a picture of a tennis ball cannon and post it here.


EDIT: Okay, here's a tennis ball cannon that I made back in about 1978. Steel Canada Dry cans with real duct tape. Not that cheap plastic stuff they sell today. This was a cloth backed tape that hasn't shown any signs of hardening or deterioration for 30 plus years. I have no idea how many times this thing has been fired; hundreds easily. Still thrills the crowd when I do it.

I set it on Captain America's seat so you'd know it was a recent picture and not left over from the 70s

Tom

 

[fredric3144]

anyone ever make a tractor out of an empty thread spool using a match , soap , pencil and rubber bands .

 

[fasteddy]

Tom,
I noticed that you used "Canada Dry" tins. Remember their old slogan "Drink Canada Dry".

Well at one time I tried but Seagram's and Molson's put on a second shift and they got ahead of me.

Steve.

 

[xseler]

Tom,
I noticed that you used "Canada Dry" tins. Remember their old slogan "Drink Canada Dry".

Well at one time I tried but Seagram's and Molson's put on a second shift and they got ahead of me.

Steve.

Now that's a classic!!!

 

[KCvale]

Tom,
I noticed that you used "Canada Dry" tins. Remember their old slogan "Drink Canada Dry".

Well at one time I tried but Seagram's and Molson's put on a second shift and they got ahead of me.

Steve.

Hahahah!
That is the funniest thing I have seen all month, thanks Steve, I needed it today ;-}

I did my share of tennis ball cannons but my my uncle Lee back in the mid 60's to an art form with his cannon but I can't remember the details as I was just a pup but it sure was cool launching stuff.

How about dry cleaning bag hot air balloons?

Dangerous as **** most of the time but still fun to see and do.

Just close up the top of dry cleaning bag where the hanger went through with a lighter so it will hold air.

Get two plastic straws or similar light rods and tape them in an X.

Get some tin foil and form a little cup about 1" wide by 1/2" deep, just enough to hold a couple of cotton balls.

Tape the X with the cup to the opening of the bag and 90's so you have a hot air balloon looking thing.

Saturate a couple of cotton balls with rubbing alcohol and light them in the foil tray, hold the top of the bag until it fills with hot air and let it go.

Do this at night for best affect as you your glowing bag of light floats up and off with the breeze and stay aloft depending on temps and winds for 20 minutes easy, usually long enough to loose sight of it and generate calls to 911 or TV news or the like with a UFO sighting HAHAHAAH!

If you really want to be devious launch 5 at a time, that really freaks people out and leads to wild multiple ship UFO sightings that seem to fly in an odd formation no real aircraft could do.

Wind, temp and how big your bag is decides what it will do and how cool it looks.

 

[2door]

We used to do that but we used a balsa wood frame and birthday candles.
One time one of our 'hot air ballons crashed on the roof of a house and started a small fire. The irony was the house was owned by a firefighter. We went to his door, told him his roof was on fire and he put it out with a garden hose. There was nothing left but some melted and burnt plastic. The candles and balsa wood burned up leaving almost nothing to find. The poor guy never figured out what started the fire on his roof.

Tom

 

[Mike B]

Pops told me how they made marble cannons when he was a kid. A foot and a half of 1/2" galvanized pipe threaded one end. Double hacksaw blade to notch the thread for the fuse. Insert firecracker, screw on pipe cap and roll marble down the business end.

I made one of these and it shot a marble through a galvanized steel trash can. Serious velocity.

 

[fasteddy]

Mike,
We called them zip guns. They were deadly accurate for a surprising distance as well. A 4" fire cracker was the preferred propellent.

I built a golf ball gun that got us into a tsunami of problems.
Often wonder what the people thought when they found it hidden in my friends barn 40 years later when the new owners tore it down.

Steve.

 

[happycheapskate]

I used to have a PVC potato cannon. I got rid of it because I figured I'd get in trouble with it. It had a wide 2 foot long base, like the kind of pipe you have in the yard for the plumbers snake. Then a funnel narrowed it down to a long tube. It had a bbq grill ignitor on the big pipe. It worked by spraying Lysol or something in from the muzzle, then cramming a tennis ball, potato, or wet t-shirt ball down the barrel with a garden hoe, and firing it from the shoulder. BOOOOF. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/...kP0bKBeFI1uDGBjJI-RPGIM9CEnOumnHWOfSVIv8rPS6Q

 

[2door]

I can't recall exactly how this worked but it had to do with a bicycle spoke, nipple attached, small BBs from a shotgun shell and ground up match heads.

If my memory serves me you packed the nipple with the match head powder, jammed the BB in and held a lit match under the nipple........

Anyone remember that?

Tom

 

[fasteddy]

Tom,
You guys had all the good stuff in your neighbourhood. We never had tennis ball guns, hot air balloons or BB guns made out of bicycle spokes.

Probably a good thing they never got to our neighbourhood. Ours had enough to keep the hoodlums busy as it was or so the neighbours said.

Steve.

 

[xseler]

I grew up in a suburb of Ft. Worth, TX ---- Hurst. There was a Bell Helicopter plant there during the height of the Vietnam war. They would fly the new helicopters incessantly at all hours of the day.

After watching the evening news with Walter Cronkite, a friend and I would climb the highest tree with our BB guns and be on the watchout for 'gorillas'. At the time, I thought it was rather silly that we were waging war on the 'gorillas', but I was an American and wanted to help.

True story.

 

[fasteddy]

Come on Dan, let loose. How are the present generation going to learn all this stuff.

I forgot. They have a computer and can look up things that we couldn't even dream of as hard as we tried.

Steve.

 

[2door]

But beating on a keyboard will never teach them to actually do something with their hands. That's the really sad part. Reading about it and actually DOING it are two different things.

It's why I admire the youngsters who join this forum. They're learning and getting their hands dirty which will provide them with valuable lessons. Sadly, they're in the minority. Or at least that's the way it appears.

Tom

 

[xseler]

But beating on a keyboard will never teach them to actually do something with their hands. That's the really sad part. Reading about it and actually DOING it are two different things.

It's why I admire the youngsters who join this forum. They're learning and getting their hands dirty which will provide them with valuable lessons. Sadly, they're in the minority. Or at least that's the way it appears.

Tom

Yep.

When this economy/society finally collapses on itself, the ones without practical mechanical/engineering/farming skills will be in a world of hurt. I really hope that I don't see it.

 

[Greg58]

I got in trouble with county sheriff at about 14 for my handheld cannon. I used a brake fluid can with a hole in the center of the bottom and the cap removed. Then five steel cans with both ends cut out then duct taped end to end with the brake fluid can at the bottom. Lighter fluid was then squirted in the hole, then I would shake it to vaporize the fluid and then hold a match to the hole. It was loud, the cop though it was cool I guess because he told us to take down in the woods to fire it.

 

[Greg58]

Speaking of fireworks who remembers what a m80 was?

 

[xseler]

Speaking of fireworks who remembers what a m80 was?

What???!!!! I didn't hear you after that explosion..........