Weapons Creation

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I dont know about you guys/girls, but im obsessed. I have to know how to make a flashbang, how to build BB guns, Grenades, smoke grenades yadayadayada. Who else is as obsessed?

I'd like to make a giant 300mm super gun, and then build a whole battery of them.

Considerin 300mm is about the size of an AA gun, or sometimes 5x bigger then the barrel of a tank, its a bit big to be buildin at home.

It's bigger than any tank cannon or AA gun. Think battleship guns.

My backyard is big enough for such an endeavour.

See, i meant things like toilet roll smoke grenades. Not HMS Belfast style guns. (await the onslaught of "Whats HMS Belfast?)

HMS Belfast's guns are 155mm, I believe.

I could board the HMS belfast if i please, all i must do is travel to london.

I went out and got a degree in gunsmithing so I could make my own guns, not that it's done much for me. I have been making various pneumatic guns recently though, I've got two different former pellet guns that I retrofitted with 10mm smoothbore barrels so that they will fire blowgun darts at velocities never intended for them, one is a CO2 powered pistol and the other is a multi-pump rifle. The rifle is a bit more versatile, since you can pump it as few or as many times as you want to change the velocity, useful if you're firing flat nosed stun darts and want to make sure they don't do any real damage. I also have a scaled up version that shoots crossbow bolts, it uses a slightly different mechanism that I built from scratch, with a hollow tube that the bolt slides over and an electric valve as the trigger. I'm still working the bugs out of that one, I'm not getting the velocity that I want and the gun is extremely bulky, I might as well be using the actual crossbow at this point. I've usually got several such projects going at once, these are just the ones that I'm farthest along on at the moment.

Think you could teach me?

there's a web site (can't remember the name) but they deal in stuff like that...sort of place your average psychopath would drool over (and you hope they never find). They used to advertise in low-rent magazines for books titled 'Get Even!', etc. Want to say snopes, but I know that's wrong.

Oh, Paladin Press, also Loompanics...

keep in mind the kid is 12 y.o.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qWNHlhyG5Q[/youtube]
http://www.buzzhumor.com/videos/18964/R ... gun_Recoil

That sounds like me at age 12. Now I have a safe chock full of guns.

Harder than you might think, a modern flashbang is actually quite complicated. In order to remain non-lethal, they carry a small charge that first detaches the firing mechanism before the whole device explodes, not exactly home workshop doable. Firecrackers are easy enough to make, though if you really wanted some sort of pull pin mechanism I suppose you could use a friction ignition system improvised from match heads. I'd leave this project alone personally though, it is not only dangerous but there is a legal issue as well with a homemade explosive device. If you've got an Indian rez nearby you might be able to get some pretty good firecrackers that approximate the effect, you usually have to know how to ask though, the good stuff is all under the counter. When you get old enough you can just buy reloading powder off the shelf at a gun shop and make your own crackers (I've made homemade gun powder from scratch, not worth it IMHO), but in the meantime the rez is the best place to get your blowing stuff up fix.



Proper spring or air powered BB guns are probably beyond your skill level, unless you've got someone who can machine metal parts for you, even I would consider this a tricky project. I do however, know how to make a pretty neat little slingshot type gun that can shoot BBs or small paintballs, pencil erasers, etc at pretty good velocity, enough to break windows. To make it, all you need are the ring out of the center of a roll of Scotch tape or something similar, and a large balloon. Simply stretch the mouth of the balloon over the ring, and push the center of the balloon back through. To shoot it, hold the ring between your thumb and forefinger like you're making an "OK" sign, drop your ammo into the balloon, pinch it through the skin of the balloon and draw it back just like a slingshot and release to fire. My friends and I used to use these things in middle school all the time to bust windows and generally terrorize the place, when broken down to a ring and a balloon it doesn't look like much of anything, but is surprisingly powerful when used correctly, don't go shooting anybody with it!

Similarly, a simple mini-crossbow can be made from the tube of a pen, rubber bands, and some stiff wire with wooden skewers for ammo. Simply bend the wire into the shape of the top of a football goalpost with a hump in the center. Place the pen tube in the hump with most of the pen behind the place where they cross, and fix it in place with several rubber bands. Stretch one large rubber band around the goal post uprights, and place a skewer in the pen tube. Pull the rubber band back, place the skewer in the center of the rubber band, continue to draw back fully and release to fire. Again, this is surprisingly powerful, a metal tipped skewer can easily penetrate a car tire so it should never be fired at anyone. This basic design can be scaled up with wooden parts and surgical tubing to make a full sized crossbow of considerable power, there was even a military model of this design called the "Big Joe 5" that was used in WWII so treat it with respect.

If you can talk your parents into it, get a copy of the book Backyard Ballistics and get them to help you build some of the stuff in it, it has plans for tons of different pneumatic guns and launchers that shoot everything from the classic potato to handmade rockets. The book presents all of the projects as "experiments" and makes them all seem very fun and healthy, I could have used it when I was a kid... Many of the air launchers could be scaled down to shoot ball bearings, maybe .25 or .50, though you'd have to charge it with a bicycle pump after every shot.



I wouldn't recommend either of these, they are both hard projects and subject to a lot of legal hassle. A car smoke screen is easy when you get older, all you have to do is run a piece of gas line into the exhaust manifold and squirt one of several types of oil in while it's hot, instant James Bond style getaway. Smoke grenades are better simply bought, they are sometimes sold as signaling devices. As for regular grenades, for curiosity's sake think of them as a pipe bomb with a mousetrap attached, when the pin is pulled and the lever released, a spring loaded trap snaps a small firing cap and lights a 4.5 second fuse attached to a blasting cap and detonates a high explosive inside a fragmentation shell. Pretty simple really, but not the sort of thing you should try to make at home.



My parents fought it for years, then finally gave in when it became obvious that it wasn't a passing phase with me. Weaponeering really isn't hard, it just takes a certain curiosity and mindset and a different way of looking at things. If it interests you as a career, I'd recommend getting very friendly with a math textbook now, since if I had to do it over I'd have gone into mechanical engineering instead of gunsmith's school. If it's just a hobby but you'd like to be more serious about it, think about shop class, being able to work metal or wood will help immensely with experimenting. Also start working on a thick skin now, some people don't think that a fascination with weaponry is healthy or socially acceptable, so be prepared for some slings and arrows. Be discreet, these days people hear that a kid is obsessed with weapons and the first thing they think is "Columbine", so don't got around mumbling about how a pop bottle can be made into a handy silencer or which household chemicals can make a deadly gas, people get a little weird about those sorts of things.

I meant weapons like grenades which in NO way harm people, i just like knowing these things. The smoke grenades i hoped i could sell to my friends who like to spend some days paintballing, same goes for flashbangs. Regualer frag-grenades that could harm arent an interest of mine. I dislike murder, unless its virtual in video games.

^
ok then

I used to make them (smoke bombs) ...when I was... twelve
"nitratium of potassium" KNO4 or KNO3 + sugar
nice times

I would make smoke bombs and made some thermite when I was 10, both are very simple to make