I used to have an aluminum blowgun back in the '70s (before it became a felony to have one in California). I wonder whatever happened to it?
Anyway, I’m marooned on an island somewhere. There’s bamboo and various trees. Maybe there are poison dart frogs. I decide I want a blowgun; say, six or eight feet long. How does one go about boring a tree branch or the segment ‘walls’ of a stalk of bamboo?
First, get a piece of bamboo of appropriate length and diameter. Then, get another piece of bamboo, or a stick of some other wood, of at least half that length and a smaller diameter. Attach a sharp thing to the end of the smaller piece of bamboo, and use it to bore out the segment walls. Once you’ve got the bulk of the walls removed, you probably want to take out your sharp thing and replace it with something rough, like a chunk of sandstone, to grind the insides smooth.
I was down on the Amazon around Iquitos and took a tour of some indigenous tribal village. The darts were sharp pointy sticks with what I believe was a puffy bit of animal fur at the end. It was really light and my compatriots were pretty damn accurate with the thing at about 5 meters. I kind of sucked at it. I’ll look around for my travel photos and see if I can find a picture.
Now in Bangkok, the bargirls used to shoot darts out of their vaginas. Try that for Kegel exercises! You were supposed to hold a blown up condom in your hand while the girls took aim. Although with all the STDs going around, it didn’t seem like that great an idea. In any case the darts there were made of paper cones with a pin in the tip. The girls were actually pretty accurate, all things considered.
The fluffy part of the dart is probably kapok fibers.
(And you have just brought back some well-suppressed memories of a visit to Bangkok during the '70s. Damn…)
That’s pretty much what I imagined.
My aluminum one was pretty accurate, too. The darts were wire, about 4" to 6" long. You’d snip off a piece and file one end to a point. The other end would be heated and pushed into a plastic bead taken from a strand.
Did the Amazonians use bamboo?
I’ve seen video on TV where a blowgun was made by splitting a long straight stick down the middle. Next they carved a channel in each half. The two halves were then joined with bindings, and maybe adhesive of some sort. The resulting hole was then smoothed with a smaller stick and some abrasive such as sand or stone chips, must as Chronos described.
This eliminates the need for bamboo which is not found everywhere.
This may have been in South America, but I don’t recall. What was the name of that program from a year or so back where the fellow went to live with various “primitive” groups?
Aluminum blowguns as well as darts are available at some outdoors stores or gun and knife shows. That’s where I’ve bought mine. Or on the Interwebs
Johnny, I think you will like this site. www.paleoplanet.net
I have the same handle over there.
That looks like a site I might make use of. Thanks.
(I’m so tempted to ask you the obvious question raised by your username!)
I have a blow gun. When my husband bought it in Indonesia, I felt certain he wouldn’t be able to get it home. It is intricately carved from bone with a metal rod inside (a newer development, I’m sure!), comes apart in three pieces and has a dart holder than hangs from it, and a dragon mouth where the darts come out. It came with about 5 darts.
We were traveling for several months, and mailed home several boxes, of purchases from Bali, before leaving, including the blow gun. Since it had a metal rod, I felt certain on x-rays it would look like a gun and get held or removed. But no, delivered right to our door.:eek:
I came home late one night and, there was my husband and one of his hammerhead friends, a few sheets to the wind, shooting darts around the livingroom!:mad: Slowly the darts became lost.
Next trip to Bali, don’t I catch him negotiating with a blowgun guy again. Thinking we’re about to own 2 blowguns, I scurry right over to interfere. The last thing I need is blowgun duals playing out in my home! But no, he was in the process of buying all the darts the fella had. 50. That’s right. I have them safely stashed where he can’t find them. There is only one, in the dart holder, for demonstration purposes.
His proudest moment was finding an identical, (well almost), blow gun, in a curio shop, for lots of money. He rushed proudly home to tell me, not only did he get a great deal, (Duh, it’s Bali the airfare was $1500 knucklehead!:rolleyes:), but, (try to imagine his pleasure), the one they had, was filled with lead! As required to import. The boy couldn’t be prouder.
When I asked the guy he bought it from what they used to hunt with it, he answered,“The Dutch!”
I’d be really surprised if bamboo would make a good blowgun. Too irregular. I think you’d need to start with a solid piece of wood.
I used to have an aluminum BG that was also just a 4 foot length of 1/2 ID aluminum tube. I made the darts from plastic material that resembled a drink stirrer, and were 5 to 6 inches long. I would force a wad of cotton into one end to conform to the tube diameter, and any sharp piece of metal from nails to sewing machine needles in the other. I was astounded at the range and accuracy. Other BG designs use a narrow hole in a tube and needle shaped.
For the desert island, depends on the type and growth stage of the bamboo, and the same with the wood. The easiest thing to do might be to use two pieces of wood, flatten a side on each piece and score a groove down one or both pieces, then tie them together with cord made from grasses, or bamboo fibers. Your dart will probably be limited to wood, unless you have some piece of metal, maybe from your plane crash. I assume you weren’t there intentionally or you could just brought a BG or tools with you. What do you plan kill? Most deserted islands in the modern world probably don’t have much animal life. It’s probably good for birds though, which you shouldn;t kill if they’re laying. Take the eggs, renewable source. You might be better off with a fishing spear, not hard to make, just sharpen the end of something. Also, most important, make sure you have fresh water, conserve it, and store it if possible. You can last a while without food, much less time without water.
I’m glad this wasn’t a “need answer quick” post.
As of a few years ago, they still do. The women I was with were more intrigued by the girls power and accuracy than the guys.
They still do it. Not all bars, of course. Only select ones. I’ve never seen a condom used for this myself, just regular balloons. That may have been just one particular bar’s schtick; condoms are going to be more expensive than balloons.
But yes, you hold the balloon over your head, and she’ll shoot it with the vaginally propelled dart. There’s a story about the now-defunct Supergirls Bar in Patpong. One guy did get hit in the forehead. Started running around screaming about Aids, then vowing to go get a cop. He never returned; then they remembered he hadn’t paid his bill.
But I’ve never seen anyone hit with a dart myself. Even the wife has held a balloon over her head and had it shot out of her hand. (She then entertained all the old hens in her office with the story.)
The most impressive I’ve seen is one girl who could hit a moving target. I’ve only seen it the one time. This one girl was performing in Midnite Bar in Soi Cowboy when it first opened. You could bat the balloon across the stage, and she’d nail it every time. And I mean every time. Impressive!
Yep, Soi Cowboy. Good times!
When I was young and stupid (ok, just young) we used to make blowguns out of aluminum tent poles. The darts were finishing nails with sealing cones made from shiny magazine covers that were cut for a perfect fit. Not much practice is needed to get surprising accuracy with a blowgun.
Most of those shows, the kinds that feature amazing vaginal tricks, now are in Patpong, although I’ve heard Long Gun Bar in Soi Cowboy have started experimenting with some.
We made them out of rolled up pieces of paper in 6th grade, firing pencils, a broken off compass needle, etc. Any trees with thin, flexible bark could be stripped, and you could probably roll that up into a functional tube.
Most of our grade school projectiles weren’t of a range or accuracy acceptable for hunting, until a friend brought in some needle probes from a frog-dissecting kit. Lightweight wood handle with a strong, sharp steel point. The teacher crackdown occurred soon after.
Neat neat neat. Fascinating. I’m afraid that I’m going to have to spend a lot of lurking time over there, curse you!
For the other end of the spectrum, I like Cheaper Than Dirt, which is sort of the American Science and Surplus of people who like weapons.
When we were kids we would build blowguns out of aluminum shower curtain rods. The darts were made from thin, 4" finishing nails that had been sharpened to a fine point on a small electric sharpening stone, and long paper cones deftly formed out of good 8.5" x 11" printer paper and scotch tape. Imagine a badminton birdie stretched out to about 10" and only 1" in diameter, with a needle-sharp spike on the end.
Anyway, these things were deadly. It would have been no problem to shoot a dart through an outstretched hand at close range. Killing animals the size of a house cat or smaller would have been no problem. It was nothing to shoot a dart a city block. The muzzle velocity was crazy.
Thankfully, it was enough of a kick for us to shoot the darts into wood, or go for distance and height.
I’m still surprised that we came up with such an effective, simple weapon on our own at such a young age.