Zip Guns Of The World

[randyc]

When I was a kid, I decided to make a single-shot pistol from a coffee percolator tube. I wired it to a wooden handle after plugging the breech end with a sheet metal screw and drilling a touch hole in the side. Beside the touch hole, I mounted the striker mechanism from a cigarrette lighter. I broke open one of my Dad's buckshot shells, poured an arbitrary amount of the powder down the percolator tube and jammed in one of the OO shot.

My parents both worked and this was during Summer vacation so I took the thing out in the back yard and turned the spark wheel of the cigarrette lighter a couple of times. BAM, the thing went off and my face instantly went numb. I dropped the thing and ran into the house. Looking in the bathroom mirror, the sheet metal screw used to plug the breech was sticking out of my nose !!!!!

I bear the scar to this day, sixty years later and still bless the fact that the screw didn't land one inch to the right or to the left and one inch high !

 

[JimDawson]

It's a wonder that some of us survived our youth.

I'm not even going to relate some of the stuff I used to do.

 

[randyc]

It's a wonder that some of us survived our youth.

I'm not even going to relate some of the stuff I used to do.

Probably the same as me: like making rockets and shooting them off from the barn loft (full of hay, naturally). Ahhhhh - the things that we do for entertainment before discovering that girls are pretty neat !

 

[drhall762]

Not too many years ago, some company re-introduced the Liberator Pistol. Too expensive for my wallet.

The old pot metal RGs were a kick. I had 2 of them, one in .22 Short and one in .22 LR. Actually I just sold both of them last October.

 

[cjtoombs]

I was surprised by the range of workmanship. There were some very finely crafted guns that someone spent some time on in there, as well as some that the maker should have been ashamed of.