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This is a real 'jumpers for goalposts' nostalgic thing, but solarider jnr wants a cap gun. This isn't a thread about the issues surrounding kids and playing with guns. Suffice to say I used to love them as a kid and haven't turned into a murderer.
Does anybody have any recommendations for a good quality gap gun and rifle that won't fall apart ofter one use?
Suffice to say I used to love them as a kid and haven’t turned into a murderer
That's exactly what a murderer would say.
Wicke are probably still the most popular name? The toys look pretty much unchanged for decades but that's not a bad thing
Forgot all about cap guns. They were great and the smell of the caps was ace. I don’t like guns at all but cap guns are fun. Remember having a cowboy revolver where you could just hit the hammer with your palm.
Do they still make them? Gosh.
I still remember the smell!
Also, those little "bombs" you could put a single paper cap into and throw it at the floor to make it bang, remember those?
At around the age of 6 or 7 I remember going into school fully cowboyed up... chaps, guns, hat, the lot.😁
Wow yeah! Those paper reels with the dots of 'gunpwder' need to get faded flared jeans, Dunlop green flash and a scratchy nylon batman t-shirt to complete the 70s experience!
Rolls of paper caps, squashed sideways and hit with a hammer. Ker-POW! 😲
Ambrose
Full Member
Rolls of paper caps, squashed sideways and hit with a hammer. Ker-POW! 😲
Oh man, never thought of doing that!
That said I did find an unused .303 round in the huge overgrown garden we had back then and tried "firing" it by putting it in a hole in the wooden shed then hitting the back of it with a nail and hammer.
I had no knowledge of equal and opposite reactions so I was lucky it didn't go off and send the shell casing and nail into my face.
Happy days though.
Wow the thought of the smell of those caps takes me right back.
For ultra violence though a potato gun was better, no noise but you got a (very inaccurate) projectile. Downside being a telling off from mom as there weren't enough spuds for tea!
Rolls of cap gun 'ammo' and before you know it its a mixed up tin of sugar and weedkiller.
While at school, a local kid made a tin of the infamous weedkiller/sugar mix and set it off one guy fawkes night.
It didnt end well and the resulting explosion took off his hand and forearm.
Keep explosive stuff away from kids.
Used to 'fire' caps with my finger nail.
Ffs dyna, that escalated quickly!
Devil bangers, you can still buy them!
Toy Galaxy Fun Snaps Throw Bangers for Teens and Adults (10) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08NCWHJMC/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_1GKECDJ5JPF8MSVJ8Y7E?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Loved cap guns as a kid*. Our two didn't have cap guns, but bangers were popular, nostalgic smell.
*I am also not a murderer. Though its been touch and go on more than one occasion.
Rolls of cap gun ‘ammo’ and before you know it its a mixed up tin of sugar and weedkiller.
I had a toy bow and arrow too. Now I hunt humans for sport in the local woods. Makes you think.
Aye I know, but I witnessed that event and like my friends at the time we all experimented with producing out own explosives, and it all basically started with doing other stuff with those caps. Cutting them up and packing them into cans, not understanding the damage they can cause.
Kids experiment and if allowed to play with the ammo, its likely they'll try to do what we did with it.
Ah my brother and I used to love our cap guns. Those little paper bangers were great too, we'd have fights with them on our street with the aim of hitting bare skin on the back of the leg.
They paled in to insignificance compared to the excitement when a friend went on holiday to France and bought back French bangers! They were lethal.
Kids experiment and if allowed to play with the ammo, its likely they’ll try to do what we did with it.
I didn’t do it and I’m guessing that other posters on here didn’t either. I just liked pretending to be a cowboy.
I didn’t do it and I’m guessing that other posters on here didn’t either.
From the potato gun thread
Made out of the drainage pipe, filled with butane and ignited by piezoelectric.
Almost blinded a kid in my school when it went a big bit wrong.
You must have had a posh childhood 😆
The smell was great, setting them off by pulling your finger nail over them was great, if not a little tingly
Kids experiment and if allowed to play with the ammo, its likely they’ll try to do what we did with it.
Not really no.
You must have had a posh childhood
Grew up on a rough council estate in West Yorkshire so not really 😀 just never went through what you describe. Played with cap and spud guns as a nipper but never progressed to bomb or spud launcher making. My brother probably did. I was more in to climbing trees, riding my bike and making rope swings. Loved a good fire every now and then though 🤔
As above, we had cap guns (mainly the roll of paper type but also later some that took a plastic ring with a dozen individual pockets on) but never progressed to making our own stuff
We did make what we called Dutch arrows though: length of cane with playing cards as rudimentary fletchings and a piece of string as a launching device. You could get some distance with that, easily over 100 yards
Forgot about Dutch arrows, they were fantastic
Cowboy town in Blackgang on the IoW is cap gun and snap heaven for littl’uns. The only ill effect we have ever witnessed is from the swinging saloon doors when the baddies kick them open! Great fun but the rifles are definitely superior to the revolvers in a shoot out.
dyna-ti
Free Member
Aye I know, but I witnessed that event and like my friends at the time we all experimented with producing out own explosives, and it all basically started with doing other stuff with those caps. Cutting them up and packing them into cans, not understanding the damage they can cause.
Kids experiment and if allowed to play with the ammo, its likely they’ll try to do what we did with it.
They banned weedkillers with sodium chlorates and so on back in the 90s, making explosives isn't as easy as it was back in the olden days so kids today should be safe ;o)
I also wouldn't call rolls of caps with minute amounts of black powder ammo, fireworks for me are far more dangerous and i can never understand how they're allowed to be sold over the counter every year!
Anyway, forget cap guns, what you want is this
https://uk.hasbropulse.com/products/nerf-lmtd-aliens-m41-a-blaster
Oh blimey yeah those arrows!
Nuts and bolts, or was that just us? 2 bolts acted into the same nut with the heads of a few matches in between, throw it and it made a good Beng on lending. Over filled one once and welded itself together, even dad, bench vice and spanner couldn't free it.
On similar vein a mate at uni filled a used co2 canister with match head scrapings ... That went bang with a big bang and he/we were lucky it was just a bang. So Cambridge engineers can still be stupid with homemade explosives
Railway dets is what you need.
🙂
The 70's were great and deadly.
My daughter was into cap guns a few years back when she was little. It is really hard to find decent ones these days - the guns are poorly made and often plastic, the caps are less loud than they used to be (and also hard to source) and even spud guns were pretty poor!
tbh apart from the noise, Nerf guns are probably a better bet - much more fun and well made
Kids experiment and if allowed to play with the ammo, its likely they’ll try to do what we did with it.
Child of the 90's and early internet here. Anarchists Cookbook, say no more.
Not really no.
Really, yes.
Not every kid but certainly there will always be one curious one that either keeps it to themselves or starts something that escalates. Most just stuff the caps into a tennis ball or wrap them round a 2p though.
But there is always that occasional story about some curious teenager that ends up with the bomb squad at the door and a visit to the dock on terrorism offences, had one locally a few years back that google can't find (doesn't know the difference between east and west).
On similar vein a mate at uni filled a used co2 canister with match head scrapings … That went bang with a big bang and he/we were lucky it was just a bang. So Cambridge engineers can still be stupid with homemade explosives
A friend of mine did physics at University. One of their projects was learning how to make a depth charge! Quite a small one, but it worked. I remember watching them set it off in the lake
I had one of these...
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/273002-lone-star-luger-cap-gun-mid-to-late-1960?in=activity
The trigger snapped before I had chance to become a Nazi or a murderer. Lucky escape.
Not every kid but certainly there will always be one curious one that either keeps it to themselves or starts something that escalates.
So not likely then.
I used to love those Snappit type things - little paper parcels with some kind of explosive inside that bang when thrown or stood on.
Rolls of paper caps, squashed sideways and hit with a hammer. Ker-POW!
I started off concertinaing caps in the gun for a louder bang - then hitting whole rolls with a hammer. One day I got a bit giddy and spent all my pocket money on caps.
Took them home, stacked them up and whacked them with a hammer - silence. Disappointed I assumed that having too many in a stack cushioned the blow and stopped them from going off. So set about gathering up al the bits and trying to set up a less ambitious stack.
Looking up I realised I'd been oblivious to the arrival of various concerned parents and neighbours all silently mouthing 'what the hell just happened?' - I was absolutely stone deaf.
Took about four hours for my hearing to return 🙂
Funny you mention these OP, as a month or so back I saw a brand new old school Wicke cap gun in a gift shop near Whitby, complete with roll caps. It brought back a lot of happy memories.
I used to have a few Lone Star brand cap guns as a kid, including a cowboy rifle. All die cast metal and very realistic. My favourite one was a private detective style snub nose revolver that used those plastic ring caps instead of the roll ones. It was loud as hell. I remember my mum took it off me in the end because the noise was rather deafening.
They paled in to insignificance compared to the excitement when a friend went on holiday to France and bought back French bangers! They were lethal.
I seem to remember trips to France being a source of fantastic knives.
Also, those little “bombs” you could put a single paper cap into and throw it at the floor to make it bang, remember those?
I've just posted about these also 🙂
Looks like they're still available!
https://magicshop.co.uk/products/fun-snaps
Ogmios nostalgic about bangers at 9m 30s
‘Little splodeys’
French bangers! You could get some proper massive ones of those too, like sticks of TNT. We used to use the little ones to explode Matchbox cars.
I seem to remember trips to France being a source of fantastic knives
Yes! always used to get either a red Swiss Army knife or one of those wooden handled Opinel locking ones from soem random market stall. That ended when I put one through my hand however at about 13 - parents decided I wasn't to be trusted with knives after that...
We loved making our own crossbows, couple of bits of old skirting or similar, nailed in a cross, couple of nails at either side, and a string of joined elastic bands.
Wooden close pegs were our arrows!
Also, those little “bombs” you could put a single paper cap into and throw it at the floor to make it bang, remember those?
I’ve just posted about these also 🙂
Looks like they’re still available!
> https://magicshop.co.uk/products/fun-snaps
We used to fire those out of double-length 'sniper' pea shooters at neighbours front windows. Sounded great!
2 bolts acted into the same nut with the heads of a few matches in between, throw it and it made a good Beng on lending.
Ahh yes, but you should try it with the contents of a couple of black rated nail gun cartridges 😉 A mate was manager of a plant hire company and this was considered a fun staff activity. We never did find the nuts, they got blown to pieces.
Good to mention, I've still got loads of strips of hilti cartridges, I was intending at some point to turn a small cannon till I found out the cops consider those home made cannons to be firearms and you can get into serious bother if found with one.
Thankfully I live in the UK not the US or I'd probably have blown myself up years ago 😆
Anyone graduate onto Estes rocket motors?