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!
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?
Gat gun fights. Stupid idea.
I vaguely remember the horror on my mum's face when arriving home form my grandparents with cap guns and pen knives 🙂
Thanks Gran!
I wonder what my son will bring home from his grandparents!
Ah yes, got a couple of opinels, a tiny flick knife and loads of bangers on trips to France. The big ones were pretty underwhelming, the size 2 and possibly 3 were best bang for buck. 1's were good for throwing at each other.
So not likely then.
Depends on who your mates are. I'd say as likely as any other childhood stupidity. All dependant on when common sense kicks in.
Gat gun fights. Stupid idea.
They are so bad you can't even hit the ground when aiming at it from 10cm away
Never had a gat gun but I did have a .177 Diana (which was similar) and I got a .22 Webley tempest for my 12th birthday along with a tiny 20cc chainsaw so I could help my dad brash and bing pulp in the wood. Being brought up in darkest argyll (achnamara/dalavich) was brilliant as a kid - a feral childs dream with motorbikes and hills, fishing and forest roads to explore.
And we (mates & myself) made the Scottish news in the mid 80's as we blew up a barn on my mates farm with the aid of home made explosives, gas bottles and a 50 gallon oil drum............got a telling off for that one.
These are the cap bomb things I referred to, though the little paper ones were great too.
These things you loaded with a little paper cap torn off the roll.
You could make your own with 2 bolts and a nut as someone described above. Never thought to put match filings into them!
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
We made those too, only with real arrows.
Wooden close pegs were our arrows!
Clothes pegs.
Anyone graduate onto Estes rocket motors?
I graduated onto Estes rockets. I've a caseful of them somewhere. The engines are probably dead now, it was years ago.
I had one of those lone star Luger's but was was chrome, much prefer the more original look in that link.
My favourite was a 38 Special but it didn't have the normal cap roll instead you loaded a plastic ring - a bit like loading the real thing.
EDIT Quick Google and realised they were called Super Disks.
Those Super Disks were the death of the cap gun age.😢 The average kid got through a pack of them in minutes.
The paper rolls were great value in comparison... even allowing for the odd tinkering to resync the caps with the hammer, remember that?😁
Bought one for my kids. Caps don't sound as loud as when I were little. Is there been some EU directive on cap power which we can now break free from?
Oh, remember owning catapults?!
My mate and I got on the train to Sheerness from near Hoo in Kent.
He came home with a Black Widow but I didn't have enough money so bought a smaller, less powerful one.
Remember playing on Upnor beach in the afternoon firing acorns at each other as they were all over the top of the beach. I was definitely under gunned, I remember that!
Everytime I walk along there I still think of that day. That's the beauty of things like this, the reminiscing.
and I’m guessing that other posters on here didn’t either
😆 Want to amend that ?. Seems this mob were up to everything, from creating crossbows to blowing up barns or flinging high velocity potatoes at passing members of the public 😆
So many memories stirred up by this thread! I used to do many of the things mentioned, I had various cap guns, and I used to buy a bunch of the packets of caps, striking them with my thumbnail, putting several into a gun for a louder bank, smacking a whole packet with a stone for even bigger bangs!
If we had a firework that failed to go off, we’d empty the filling out and light it, making a ‘genie’, a quick ‘woomph’ and a cloud of smoke. Had those little plastic bombs as well, great fun putting several caps in then tossing them as high into the air as possible, to try to get louder bangs.
I used to play around with bits of brass tube, crimping one end and folding it over, packing with scraped off match heads, then clamping the crimped end in a vice, pushing a bit of wire into the tube and holding a match under the tube…
Did try filling a bit of tube with powdered match head, crimping both ends, then hitting it with a hammer - my ears rang for ages after!
Used to do the Dutch arrow thing with a mate, oddly enough on the small green just down the road from where I now live, great fun trying to get them to the other side of the green. We used to make little darts out of matches, carefully putting two vertical cuts into one end, folding tiny squares of paper into triangular ’fins’ and carefully pushing into the slots, then pushing a pin with the head cut off into the other end and winding fuse-wire around for extra weight. Then we’d amuse ourselves by lobbing them at each other in the classroom when the teacher wasn’t there. So much fun to be had… 😆
He came home with a Black Widow but I didn’t have enough money so bought a smaller, less powerful one.
I bought a Black Widow (claiming it was only for fishing purposes, obviously). Obviously went straight out and used it to ping stuff at my friends. Insta-confiscated, never saw it again. 🙁
I used to play around with bits of brass tube, crimping one end and folding it over, packing with scraped off match heads, then clamping the crimped end in a vice, pushing a bit of wire into the tube and holding a match under the tube…
I did the exact same thing, only I used a biro pen and while it didnt have the rocket effect i was hoping for, i swear it did at least stay upright for 0.001 of a second.
Anyone graduate onto Estes rocket motors?
I wonder how many people have googled 'Estes rockets' over the last few hours 😆 I know I did, then spent an hour watching home made rockets on youtube.
Anyone else have a .177 air rifle they fired BBQ skewers out of?
@dyna-ti I'm beginning to think it may be a Scottish thing. I found those nail gun charges in a building site once, just starter pistol ammo with a fancy strap. Didn't throw a load in a gorse fire (the we really did not start, we were dicks but not complete fannies), honestly.
Think it was King of Random (Rip) who did a how to rocket motor using common ingredients and a nutri bullet to mix them then stuffed them in plastic pipe .
@somafunk you were the inspiration for the flashback in Complicity and I claim my 5 quid.
I wonder how many people have googled ‘Estes rockets’ over the last few hours 😆 I know I did, then spent an hour watching home made rockets on youtube.
They were a proper giggle. Sadly it was in the days before multimedia phones, I do have some photos... somewhere.
I used to make cap bombs - fold a whole roll of paper caps lengthwise so they all split slightly, then wrap it around a 2p coin. Cover the whole thing in a layer of sellotape, then fling it at something. Makes a great bang, and I never did find the coin afterwards! Probably came close to killing myself/someone with it a few times.
A friend tried making one with 3 rolls once, it went off in his hands as he was wrapping it!
Thankfully without the tape to provide compression it just went "whoof" with a cloud of smoke, I'll never forget his stunned expression though haha
I also used to have a few small mousetrap type things, you put a single plastic cap in it then put it underneath something, waiting for someone to lift it and release the spring... My mother was not amused 😀
Loved my cap pistols. My favourite was a Walther P38 I bought from Zodiac, a toyshop on Salford precinct. Hours of fun patrolling the ginnel behind my nana's house in vigilante mode.
My ammo dealer was Olroyd's the newsagent. For some reason caps were secreted under the counter as if considered dark contraband. Each roll came in a tiny round cardboard "box." I think they were two pence each in 1976ish. One day I spunked all my pocket money to enjoy a gunpowder weekend!
I placed six rolls of caps on the pavement, took aim and dropped an 8lb Accrington brick onto them. BANG!!!! Jesus. My ears were whistling and popping for hours afterwards.
Such an emotive smell from fired caps. Like Playdoh, Vosene and the pick-ups on my Matchbox Powertrack racing cars.
I wonder how many people have googled ‘Estes rockets’ over the last few hours 😆 I know I did, then spent an hour watching home made rockets on youtube.
I had those they were great fun. One guy had the Saturn 5, took it for its first spin and it was incredible, right up until it blew into a copse never to be seen again.
I bought my daughters (8 and 11) a box each of the little snaps when we were on holiday - loads of the on the counter in Toymaster. They had no idea what they were and then had a brilliant 15mins throwing them around.
Something I'm trying to find is a Dennis the Menace style pea shooter - any ideas where one can be found?
I also used to have a few small mousetrap type things, you put a single plastic cap in it then put it underneath something, waiting for someone to lift it and release the spring…
Christ, I'd forgotten about those. Great fun under toilet sets.
Did anyone else make "deathwatch beetles"?
I have a vague memory of a cowboy outfit, plastic stetson, fake leather waistcoat, plastic spurs, and big flappy leg things like trousers with no arse in them, they had frills round the outside that matched the waistcoat, and the main bit, a holster with plastic bullets and a cap revolver that had round plastic cartridge things, bout 15 shots and needed to go get more of those...and a plastic sheriffs badge.
Parents told me to keep the noise down and I arrested them and the woman next door at gun point, got yelled at and don't remember ever using any of it after that, toys last about 3 days max, once you stop getting a reaction you want something more scary, just get him a proper weapon and get it done with, that's what kids really want.
Apart from my O/U shotguns, Anshutz XIV .22lr carbine and lots of high end air powered stuff, my favourite gun was one I bought in Perranporth (Hill's gift shop IIRC) in 1979.
It was called Sekiden Automatic. I found a pic':
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Squeezing the trigger compressed the main spring then tripped the sear to fire a plastic ball. As fast as you could pull the trigger - it fired. Semi-auto even. Bruised a few mates with it!
had the luger, loved it though my favourite was a machine pistol with silemver and removable shoulder rest that came in a natty cardboard brief case...I, too date, have not murdered anyone.
black widows were great but we found a roll of lead flashing on a garage roof and used my mates mums saucepan to melt it and the little hole on pair of pliers as a mould. that was a bit dodgy test firing it against a garage door and it went clean through!
we reverted to bendy sticks and bits of clay on the end after that, pugging as we referred to it in Hampshire!
