[Closed] Skills squired at a young age

How to climb trees safely and how to climb a rope. Both good skills. Also how to tie knots that don't come undone when you are climbing a rope.

And how to splint a broken leg. See above.

Burning plastic bags.

https://www.tinkeringschool.com/

Ok Boomers.

How to make and throw a Dutch Arrow.

Empty Corona lemonade pop bottles (with the top screwed on) chucked into fire - hours of explody fun! 🙂

Before Skateboards we had Sitboards.
Can't find an image,but it was a single rollerskate ...

with a plank of wood (7"x 24") attached sideways,knuckleskuffingtastic 🙂

Learning how to spell?

Beat me too it...😛

Learning to wheelie

Duelling with airbombs. No? Just me then....

Burning things with a maginfiying glass.

The hand slap game 🙃

How to make a bow & arrow out of willow and/or cane & fishing line. Usually the bow would be taller than me!

How to make a catapult out of stiff wire and lots of elastic bands.

How to bunny hop.

Missed out on how to climb trees safely, although never fell from high up enough to break anything.

Failed to grasp the lessons on tying knots.

How to make a catapult Cattie out of stiff wire and lots of elastic bands a branch and Guttie.

At age about 13 (so around 1980) I built a chopper - a standard bike frame with lengths of 'borrowed' scaffold brayed over the fork with a smaller wheel on the front. I sprayed it up red faded into silver butts (of course it had obligatory cow-horn handlebars).

I then helped my mate build one as he didn't have the skills (his sprayed black with matching style fade into gold) and we would ride around the town centre like a pair of easy riders.

Eventually I chopped my fork back down and put the original wheel back on and made it into some kind of quasi-mtb with the really stiff (and straight) fork long before MTBs were a thing in the UK.

I still get pangs of pity that we never took any pictures of them.

How to make a slung out of a branch, the tongue of an old shoe and cahootchie.

 

How to make and throw a Dutch Arrow.

How to make and throw a Scotch Arrow. Can't imagine why you didn't call them that in Scotland... (-:

In fact, I say 'make', my starting point was a real arrow rather than a bit of garden cane.

Oh, making real arrows. That's a skill I acquired at a young age.

Duelling with airbombs.

^This.

In the subways for extra acoustics!

Tiggy Gat gun.

Burning things with a maginfiying glass.

Happy days

Judging the right range to shoot* your mates with an air rifle ,so that it was just a 'sting'

* no head shots 😉

Yeah, I still have a scar in my back from that. Too short a range as it turns out.

Digging huge holes in my parents garden for no apparent reason. I could have used the experience to get a job in one of the utilities firms who dig big holes. Also was pretty good at building enormous bonfires for Bonfire Night on a local bit of wasteground. Making water bombs out of folded paper was always a fun pastime, but I sadly never developed the interest into more aesthetic origami creations.

Burning things with a maginfiying glass.

Happy days

Ahhhhh  –  agreed

Riding singlespeed rigid everywhere

1) clearing your nose, cleanly and effectively, with a quick blast on each nostril
2) not sure what you call it, but 'finger whistling' - either 2 fingers from both hands, or thumb and forefinger from one hand

From what I've observed, if not learned in childhood, your position as an adult is highly questionable

Gobbing properly. A right proper big phlegmy one. A gobbing competition was always a school lunchtime favourite. 🙂

I seem to have lost this skill though and it mostly ends up down my front.

Before Skateboards we had Sitboards.
Can’t find an image,but it was a single rollerskate …

Or an Action Man Tank or armoured car with any tracks taken off..

I got shot in the back with a Diana SP50 when I was 9. It hurt like ****.

Me and my equally nerdy mate built a Sinclair ZX81 from the £49.95 kit.
We were only 12.

Say wut! 🙂

Me and my equally nerdy mate built a Sinclair ZX81 from the £49.95 kit.

I may have been part involved in selling you that. 😳

Errrm...

Riding a bike? (bit controversial on here, I know...)

Say wut! 🙂

And the turret!

(I had the half track - minus tracks. My brother had the tank - minus tracks, turret and big pointy gun! I can't remember who was quicker down the street. They were rubbish over jumps.)

Bolt-bombs?

(I had the half track – minus tracks. My brother had the tank – minus tracks, turret and big pointy gun! I can’t remember who was quicker down the street. They were rubbish over jumps.)

That so needs to be done on Red Bull Soapbox 👍🤣

I keep finding random skills that I learned from just getting in my grandad's way as he fought his Cortina's inevitable decline. First time i ever wanted to do fibreglass, all the skills were just there in the cold storage part of the brain (and so was the smell!)

Going on any journey over, say, 50 miles with a feeling of trepidation that you'll break down at least once en route.
Youngsters these days have no idea how unreliable 1970s cars were (usually BL) or the wonderous world that is the nettley grassy bank of a motorway.

My dad's 1.3 Marina saloon (Brooklands green) ruined several holidays and day trips.

Fixing two stroke engines:
Basically a collection of holes, so not that difficult.

Adjusting the 'monkey chain' to get a Sturmey Archer 3 speed to work properly.

Siphoning petrol.

Adjusting the ‘monkey chain’ to get a Sturmey Archer 3 speed to work properly.

I once dismantled a hub (using a six inch nail as a drift to remove the cover), cleaned and put back together – and it worked. My mum wasn't too pleased as in did it in the dining room in front of the fire to keep warm and I didn't exactly do a good job of protecting the carpet from the mess.

Edit: Just watched a YouTube tutorial and I have no idea how I did that as a kid :-O

1.3 Marina saloon (Brooklands green)

1.3 Marina saloon - Burgundy
1.8 Marina estate - Harvest Gold
Edit: neither of them a stranger to the hard shoulder

We had a Maxi 1750HLS in Brooklands Green. I believe it was one of the most powerful family saloons around at the time (twin SU carbs IIRC) and a few years later I knew a lad who managed to put that spec engine into a Mini :-O

Youngsters these days have no idea how unreliable 1970s cars were (usually BL) or the wonderous world that is the nettley grassy bank of a motorway.

My oldest daughter is 17 and has started to learn to drive. She reported back a few weeks ago how a similar aged friend of hers had trouble knowing how to start a car. (Do you press the button with foot on brake, or clutch or both, or use a key.) I pointed out that keys were far simpler when I was learning, but we had the dreaded CHOKE. If you could master the choke, and get a couple of cylinders popping then you might need to spray some random, magical fluid onto a part of the engine in the hope that a couple more cylinders might start popping. Then you'd mutter something about the points needing sharpening, or something, and hope that you could complete ypur journey.

I'm so glad that I learned to drive cars that didn't need double declutching!

We had a Maxi 1750HLS in Brooklands Green.

So did we. It didn't feel remotely powerful.

We used to call them sling arrows if it’s the same thing, length of straight thin wood-forsythia in my case, and propelled by a bit of string wrapped around the rear of the arrow and the other end round your hand. Making a guy for bonfire night, begging for cash outside the local shops and blowing the proceeds on bangers. Making a cannon out of old scaffold pipe and putting said bangers inside for extra BOOM!
Never get away with it now, any of it😢

So did we. It didn’t feel remotely powerful.

I never got to drive it as I was too young. So was my brother when he took it out for a joyride and parked it into a lamp post, writing both the car and lap post off so I never got to drive it.

My step father was an industrial chemist. I was pretty proficient with weedkiller, sugar and fertiliser by my mid teens. Which was also the time of the IRA Christmas bombing campaigns. Madness! I was once evacuated from a bus in Victoria bus station that was thought to have a bomb on it.

We lived in Essex at the time and would poke around in the old wartime airfields. Duton Hill had been ploughed up but you could find live ammunition in the soil.

Digging huge holes in my parents garden for no apparent reason.

Ah will I did it for reason. An underground den. It was my mate's garden though, my mum would have killed me.

I did help my dad service the car, which helped greatly when got my first one - a Hillman Imp.

Map reading. Did that from an early age, transcontinental journeys too. The love of maps has never left me.

If you could master the choke, and get a couple of cylinders popping then you might need to spray some random, magical fluid onto a part of the engine in the hope that a couple more cylinders might start popping.

Or in the case of my Fiesta which by now would be flooded, remove the air filter and prop open the choke butterfly with the screwdriver in the glovebox.

We always used a peg to keep the choke open on our Minis - the locking mechanism never seemed to work.

I was good at doing 360ºs on a skateboard - I could do 5+, or more than 1800º.

Last time I tried, after years of not putting my foot on a deck, I could still do four. I could manage an ollie 180º too.

Keepie uppie or kerby I used to easily reach 100 at keepie but then boredom set in

I’m so glad that I learned to drive cars that didn’t need double declutching!

Its nit difficult. I had a panda with gubbed syncromesh on third. Great car could push it up a small hill then jump start it down the other side all on my own.

Used a coin to wedge open the chevettes choke...them were the days! Apart from that - learning to ride a bike from my Dad, baking from my Nana and Mam, basic mechanicking from Dad and bro.

Taught myself ratios when mixing two stroke petrol for the old Lambretta/Vespa we used to pick up at 12 year old, not as accurate as 20:1 or 50:1 for today's Stihl saw just a guess if it looked right or get the girl at the petrol station to give us an extra glug from the dispenser to prevent seizure