Blow guns.

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I haunted the blowgun forums long enough to learn that these were pretty well regarded:

http://www.blowgun.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=26

Got one in red, .50 cal, 48 inch, took all the doohickies off except the front sight and the mouthpiece. Put a band of black electrical tape on it to mark the spot where my supporting thumb rests.

It's under $20 and it's perfect. I like the .50s, the smaller ones are too small and the bigger ones have a lower selection of projectiles. The darts they sell here are terrific, straight and true. Very pleased with it.

You can clean up a lot of your bad habits by taping a laser to it and trying to hold the dot still while you shoot. That will fix your horizontal dispersion. Vertical is all about breath control and there's no shortcuts, just practice, practice, practice.

My target is a regular cardboard box. No need for anything fancy.

I was really looking forward to using the little blunt projectiles against empty soda cans but I realized the are the exact size and shape to efficently block the airways of my various pets, who would find them irresistible if they encountered any on the ground. It's a shame because they also seemed to work quite well.
 
Had one of the cheap gun-show aluminum blow guns when the kids were young.

You could get very good accuracy out of it.

But I am still finding the spring steel wire "darts" in the back yard with the lawm mower tires 30 years later!!!

rc
 
Had several when I was young, one was store bought and the rest were home made out of bamboo. They can be accurate and have a good sting as I found out the hard way. We would harrass tree rats with them and more than once we shot each other in the seat of the pants. Lots of fun, might have to find one and spend a few hours re-learning the skill again.
 
You can make a DIY blowgun with some aluminum conduit, conical paper cups, and screws. You cut the tips off the paper cuts, make a slit near the end of the cone, and screw the wood screw into the tip. They hit surprisingly hard.

John
 
John,

Just before bed last night I found a short section of electrical conduit, to short to be taken seriously. I was disheartened to find my cheap dime store marbles I use for sling shot ammo to be a smidgeon to large, but then noticed on of the kids "Nerf" gun darts the cats had been playing with. Fit perfect and the kids and cats all got chased to bed in style. A weird style, but style.

After they had all cleared the common areas of the house I ran across an insulin needle in its carrier. This also fit perfect and at the short ranges I used my short tube hit pretty hard and front forward. I am considering rounding up these things as they get used and drilling the tip enough to glue in a wire nail with the head snipped off and finding a five foot or so tube.

In the way back a friend saw an article on these things and "made one" from a copper pipe he had. He used a large punch he heated up to form cones from a plastic milk jug, cut those to fit, straightened and stiffened some small copper wire (lock one end in vise, other end in electric drill chuck, pull and bump the drill on a few quick times, twisting both straightens and work hardens the copper wire) Until he last the last of his darts and decided he had better uses for his time than making new ones, there were dart perforated soda cans, telephone poles and trees all over the neighborhood.

Also as a kid I saw a demonstration at "Unto These Hills" of a Cherokee using a section of American Bamboo with cat tail (bull rush) darts. I would have thought the bore to big, but he made it work.

A friend that played with one a bit gave the main character of his first SF&F book a blow gun as his main distance weapon. At the time despite youthful experiences mentioned above I felt his unicorn in the book more believable than the feats his main character performed with his blowgun.

-kBob
 
My brother used to make blowgun darts with cotton balls, a match stick, and needles. When he got a little older, he graduated to purchasing blowguns, and making darts with plastic beads and spring steel wire.

I don't know if the process has changed, but the way it used to work, was clipping off a length of wire, heating one end, and then sliding the hot end of the steel into the bead. You then held the steel in place until the plastic cooled around it, holding it in place.
 
Dang it John, I forgot about the conduit tick. We used half inch emt and ted wire nuts, cut the wings off the wirenuts and they fit better. Lots of fun to hit the guy on the other side of the shop when he least expects it.
 
:)

I didn't take the time to smooth down the ends of my conduit after I cut it, so I wrapped a little red tape around the rough end.
 
I just received an 18" blowgun for a project I'm working on that's similar to the MegaDart. It's just something to tinker with.

I originally planned to connect it to a Tippmann C3 (the old propane combustion powered paintball gun) that's been collecting dust in the garage. I was curious what kind of velocity could get from this combination with these darts that I also purchased with the blow gun.

But now I have other plans for the C3 and really want a MegaDart of my own, even if I have to build it from scratch.
 
Years ago I had one of the mail order 48" blow guns that came with a bundle of spring steel wires and a long string of "beads" and cones in the proper caliber. I cut the wire to length and heated the wires to push into the beads. It was possible to get very accurate with a little practice. I used to climb up in the hay loft of the barn with a flashlight and a supply of darts and go after the roosted sparrows and pigeons. Years later there were still little sparrow skeletons pinned to the beams with the orange beaded darts.
I gave it to my best friend's 11 y/o son at a camping/fishing guy's weekend and he had fun with it for several years. He even got a job using it to bring down balloons from the high ceilings of their church. Apparently they had a balloon problem following weddings etc and the kid figured out how to blunt a dart that would pop balloons but not stick in the ceiling.
 
My boys and I muck'd around with a couple a number of years ago. Lemme tell ya, I have no doubt that one of those spikes can kill ya.
 
kBob: My Son and I still have 2 or 3 of them around the house and we shoot them ever once in a while. If You have never tried shooting a Blow Gun you are missing something. They are very accurate and very easy to learn to shoot in a very short length of time. I first seen a Blow Gun being used, when the Army sent me to the Jungle School at Fort Sherman in Panama in 1968. The Panamanian`s that lived out in the Jungle used Blow Guns to hunt Monkeys and large Birds with to eat. Their Blow Guns were really very long 10ft or better, made out of Bamboo the way they looked. And they used darts that were small around and very sharp pointed sticks that were 6 to 8 inches long, with a ball of cotton it looked like on the other end. They would slip up on a monkey up in the Jungle Canopy and then take one of their darts out and dip the sharp end into a cloth draw stringed pouch, that they carried that had a really thick reddish liquid in it . And then shoot the Monkey and it would make a lot of noise but in a very short amount of time the Monkey would just start to shake all over and then fall out of the tree. I always wondered just what was in their draw string pouches, but what ever it was it darn sure killed those Monkeys stone dead in a very short amount of time.
ken
 
Made one as a kid. 36" x 0.5" bore. I made 6" darts from spring steel wire wrapped with electrical tape. Very accurate and surprisingly powerful. It could easily take small game under 15 yards.
Tons of fun for a total outlay of $4.
 
I can't access sites with instructions while at work, but making dart poison from chewing tobacco should be fairly easy, work well on small game, and be harmless to eat unless you have a cut in your mouth.
 
"...Well.......say something..." Ok. You're guilty of possession of a prohibited weapon and are hereby sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Been like that, up here, since 1 Jan., 1978. We're still trying to figure out why. snicker. And it applies to nunchuks, shuriken and morning stars. We think there were too many Medieval, pygmy, ninjas holding up variety stores in Montreal.
"...dart poison from chewing tobacco..." No chaw is needed. All that crap in a dirty ash tray is enough. It's tobacco tars.
 
A few years ago I used a non-OSHA approved air gun and drilled it out a little more. Put a short piece of rubber tubing on the end for a seal. Put this up to the end of a blow gun and launch a dart. 150 psi. really increases velocity.
 
Saw a You tube yester day from that MikeHacks guy about "exploding blow gun darts"

He was making darts for his short PVC blow gun from #8 bolts using home made paper and tape cones and placing a plastic ring cap on the front end.

Hit something solid and they went "Bang"

You could also throw them or drop them from a height. Reminded me a lot of the old sidewalk cap darts of my youth.

-kBob
 
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