Lethal Weapon

It appears that toy guns, weapons, armaments and other items to mimic warfare and conflict have returned to the shops. The stand taken by the likes of Early Learning Centre to ban the sale of weapons may have been for nought and if they are now losing out on market share then their convictions have certainly back fired on them.

In my childhood the receiving of a toy pistol, usually a cowboy six shooter model, was joyous. They were however quite dangerous to use, not so much from the actual firing process but getting your fingers trapped under the hammer or in the hinge if the gun was of a rotating barrel type. The noise from the pistols was two-fold. The loudest noise was the whooping and a-hollering which accompanied just holding the gun. The other but most important sound came from the ammuntion.

Within pocket money range were the small strips of gunpowder spots know as caps. These could be purchased singularly or in a tight packed multi-roll from the local toy shop. A sixpence seems to be a recollection of the price but in those days everything for a child to buy was that amount. They came in small round cardboard packets, rather grainy and coarse with upper and lower sections squeezed together. Inside was a tightly wound roll of paper with perhaps 50 explosive dots. This was carefully transferred into the chamber in the gun and like an old reel to reel tape the leading edge was run up and rested under the open hammer.

Usually the roll would fall out of the container but it was always fun to gather it up and restore it to its tight compact form. A squeeze of the trigger would bring the hammer down to cause a concussive impact on the explosive with a loud bang, a flare of fire and a wonderfully addictive and evocative odour of cordite, sulphur and mischief. If flush for cash then a rapid firing sequence could easily deplete a full strip of caps. There was very little wastage after the combustive process although a few spots of gunpowder did get through unscathed. It was not always possible to wedge these leftovers into the gun so next best was to set them off by banging it with a hammer or scraping it with a nail. Without the confined spaces of a gun chamber the reaction was usually a soft sounding "phut", a puff of smoke and a momentary flash of fire.

The other form of ammunition was what my big sister always referred to as riggamorses but  I think were called ringamorses although even Wikipedia cannot source this as an actual word. It may even have been a brand name back in the 1960's and early 70's. These were the next generation from caps although more likely a cynical way of extracting more pocket money from gun happy kids. The system comprised a red plastic moulded circle, like a bicycle wheel but with the equivalent spoke bed to the rim having a small round form filled with an explosive charge. The whole thing was pushed onto the rim of a rotating barrel of the toy gun and the firing hammer hit the back of each to produce the noise of a shot. Compared to caps these were limited to between 10 and 20 shots only.

Typically, the increase in the number of moving parts on a toy gun had a direct and proportionate relationship to what could break off, seize up or just not work for the desired effect.

Some of my schoolmates progressed to actual air pistols and rifles but the temptation to stray from a static bullseye target to a perching bird, next doors cat or the passing traffic was often just too much to resist. The gradual build up of fatalities in the garden was soon noticed by the grown ups leading to inevitable confiscation. Nowadays the reporting of a weapon in the hands of a minor would certainly arouse the interest and response from the tactical weapons group of the local police force with potentially dire consequences.

My own subsequent lethal weapon was very much home-made but for a short time in our street was the most popular plaything for all ages and genders. The nearest that I have seen to this has been a pipe bomb used as a terror weapon in many newsworthy conflicts.

There was always a good supply of nuts and bolts around the workbench in Fathers garage. My first assembly of a weapon from these components was quite modest being a short stubby pair of bolts with a single cap charge eased into the nut before tightening up both ends. When thrown up in the air the impact from hitting the ground would set off the explosion with a very satisfying noise and the accompaniement of cascading metal fragments as the force seperated the three constituent parts. The next logical step in the keen mind of a schoolboy was to scale up the operation.

I assembled a dozen or so of the smaller nut and bolts and threw these up in the air before taking cover around the corner of the house. The process did confirm a number of the laws of physics, such as:

a) What goes up must come down and together if of the same thing
b) noise is directly proportional to setting off the neighbours dog,
c) a loud explosion will always generate interest amongst adults,
and
d) glass in a window is not very naturally resistant to high velocity metal -well that was my explanation if challenged.

Of course there was considerable scope to ramp up both the size of the bolts and the number of cap charges. A very substantial coach bolt was eventually purchased outright from the local ironmongers and packed with almost a whole reel of caps. I threw it high into the air in the street outside the house. Running for cover I heard the extremely loud and echoing sound wave from the detonation but could not afterwards, as the smoke and cordite cleared, find any trace of the pieces anywhere.

That concluded my interest in home made bombs.