Oh yes. I don’t know how I forgot about the model rocket engine bazooka I made and accidentally burned the neighbor’s shed down with. I haven’t done much with model rockets since (Though I kinda want to attach a loooong grounded wire and send one up in a thunderstorm).
The first thing that comes to mind (because you did specify diabolical) is breaking the staple-remover in half, and using the paperclips to lash it to the mini bat. Low tech, but it’s a mace.
Or, if the bat is very small/light lash the intact staple remover to the mini-bat, and attach the toner cartridge (with one side removed, if necessary) to the other side of the mini-bat. Holding the staple remover to your desk with one hand, load the cartridge basket with staple or paperclip caltrops, pull down and release. It’d work better with a ruler or pens instead of the mini-bat, but I’m just working with what I was given.
Of course, with a holocaust cloak and a wheelbarrow, you’ve got it made.
When I was in elementary school (early 70’s), we used to make tennis ball cannons out of the old soda cans (you could take the bottoms off with a can opener) and duct tape. We used lighter fluid for fuel.
DISCLAIMER: THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS AND STUPID. DO NOT DO THIS YOURSELF!
At the age of 10 I got tired of the usual bottle rockets, roman candles and fire crackers and built myself a bomb out of a small coffee can filled with various explosives and wrapped the finished product with several layers of electrical/duct tape. I sneaked out the window one night and detonated it in the parking lot of a strip mall. It broke a lot of windows and I could feel the blast through the soles of my sneakers. One good thing came of that: it scared me away from pyrotechnics.
In junior high metal shop we made throwing stars by spot-welding 2 triangular scraps of sheet metal together.
In what should have been my college years a group of my friends and I made giant slingshots out of surgical tubing and sections of blue-jean legs. It took 3 people to launch something, usually rotten fruit or vegetables. But they could fly easily a quarter mile.
There’s the rocket out of a paper match. You wrap the head of the match tightly with cigarette package foil, 3 or 4 layers. Then prop the rocket up at an angle with the head clear and hold a burning match under the head of it. Make sure you don’t have any valuable fabrics/old vinyl records on the other side of the room, because it will be very hot when it lands.
The one adolescent destructive experiment that really stands out in my mind was the tightly-sealed glass pop bottle of water, with the proper screw-down (not beer-bottle) type of cap.
Very low tech. No chemical expertise required. Just, in this case, a slow and low ember fire left over after some stumps and brush had been burnt in a cleared plot of land.
After a few minutes in the hot coals, it started to whistle.
After a minute more, the whistle began to increase in pitch.
Soon after the gang of us retreated to behind the trunks of a stand of large trees, the whistle was out of human range. Dogs began barking.
Then WHOOOOMMMPPPP!
There was a huge mushroom cloud (literally) of superheated steam, and propelled ash, smoke, and soot. The biggest fragment of glass we ever found was the thumb-sized piece that had been saved from shrapnelization by virtue of being held in by the cap’s threads. We dug for days at turns in the ashes after the fire went out, without ever finding anything larger.
That was stupid.
I’m not getting into the experiments with shotgun shells, chem lab products, pipes, matchheads, or rubbing alcohol.
Ultra-low-tech, but I used to amuse myself by throwing full cans of soda into a bonfire, and running like hell. They didn’t explode, though, so I guess I got lucky.
I also had a potato cannon, although I never had the marble-sized barrel. I may have to try that.
I’ve seen plans for a capacitor discharge gun that’ll put a quarter through wood at 80 feet. I’ve also read about the results of discharging a 1200 [sym]m[/sym]F capacitor into a bowlful of Jell-o. I’d like to see that sometime, although not at my house.
Liquid nitrogen in a 2-liter or 1-liter plastic soda bottle. Those bottles are incredibly strong to hold carbonated soda. You put about an inch, inch and a half worth of LN in the bottom and then put the top on decently tight and get the hell away. It generally takes 5-15 minutes for a smaller 1L or 16 oz and sometimes as much as 45 to an hour for the 2Ls.
But when they go… oh man. I own guns and shoot them
regularly, and it’s definitely a lot louder than a .22lr. It
may be as loud as a .45. I once left a 16ozer on a lawn (I refuse to say where or when ;]) and let it blow up. Came back to the spot the next day. About a 4" diameter circle scoured down to the dirt. The largest piece of plastic I found was about the size of a postage stamp and completely unrecognizable, having been stretched into an utterly bizzare shape by the pressure and/or the explosion. It really is a case of irresistible force vs. immovable object with those things. I wonder how many thousand PSI those plastic soda bottles are rated for…
I suppose you could do the same thing with dry ice. Probably take a lot longer for it to blow however. These are “cold” bombs, so you’re not going to burn your hand off playing with them. But you might still BLOW it off. And if one goes up in your face, you WILL be permanantly deaf. Never, ever get near one that hasn’t gone off. A police officer found one that, ah, my friend had set.
It was in the process of pressurizing itself. He poked it with his knife (don’t do that) and it went up in his face. He had a face-shield, but I think he was deaf for a week. He was lucky. So as with any dangeorus toy, excercise extreme caution and good judgement.
-Ben
I can’t believe someone hasn’t mentioned a kitchen sink bomb yet!
Ok here’s what you do, no wait don’t do this, I’m just saying that hypothetically… Take a two littre bottle fill 1/2 to 3/4 with random kitchen cleaners then take a piece of aluminum foil wad up into thin stick shape, quickly shove into bottle wwhile sealing the cap on tightly. The get the hell away from it. Sometimes this can take along time so do not go to “check it out”, it will eventually exploded.
And of coarse making pipe bombs are fun ecspecially when yo go around to peoples houses you don’t like and put them in there mail boxes.
As for the potato guns we always used hair spray, with an external lighter switch.
Don’t. It’s a first-rate b!tch to ignite, but once it does, you’re not putting it out until it’s all gone. We used an old engine with frozen pistons for a test-block, as the cylinders at the bottom of the stroke made a nice strong cup. Our thermite went right through the cylinder and out throught the bottom of the oilpan, lighting everything flammible along the way (like oil sludge. Eeew!).
Other stunts to not pull: Throwing soapstone in a hot campfire. It’s very soft, and frequently has lots of water trapped in it’s structure. It fragments like a grenade when it gets hot enough.
When I was a kid in the 70’s, one of the neighbourhood kids had a cool dad who would occasionally bring home a styrofoam cooler full of dry ice, and bags of plastic test tubes, with caps. Predictably, we got a lot of amusement out of putting water and dry ice into the test tube, capping it, shaking it, and standing it up on the road. After a few seconds, the cap would pop and the test tube would rocket into the air a respectable distance.
When I was a range safety officer, we used to do a little demonstration to new recruits with a .22 rifle and a small barrel of water. I had a firing point officer who was a sharpshooter (many time gold medalist in the DCRA, several Commonwealth gold medals) – he’d pick off the barrel, which would detonate with a very satisfying whump! and nothing but wet splinters left.
Some advanced car audio systems use massive(1 farad+) capacitors so the thunderous bass notes won’t make the headlights flicker. I once saw a description of one of those that was 15 farads, but I don’t remember the manufacturer. Just think of the possibilities!
I made a Jacob’s Ladder with an old neon sign transformer many years ago. I also used to like to take one lead from it and “zap” people waith sparks from my fingers. Imagine my surprise the time I tried that with it resting on what I thought was a plastic table. I casually leaned against it, and found it was actually painted steel, and I’d made a nice closed circuit. It was about 7000 volts, if I recall correctly.
When I was a kid I used to make home-made “fireworks” with matches, toilet-paper rolls, black tape, disposable flash-units, and (long) telephone wires. Those were loud. I’m grateful I didn’t end up like maimed like Mark Pauline.
Looking around in sheer amazement that this thread and it’s posts describing every low cost methodology for endangering life and limb known to man, is still plugging away unmolested by a mod, while the “shrooms” threads are always closed after a few posts.
Reminds me of the time we emptied the shot out of a couple of 12 guage shells and then filled one with the powder from several others. We crimped an empty one over the now full one and inserted one of those waterproof fuses. We placed it on the asphalt in a bank parking lot (late at night) and lit it. Big ass BOOM, and a plate-sized divot of asphalt missing.
No need; we already have one, her name is Judy. She’s been with us almost since the SDMB was first established at AOL, but I forgot what she currently goes by.
It was an exultation. My point is that’s it’s great to be an American where dangerous, red blooded threads like this can go unmolested regardless of what happens to the druggie threads.
