Experimental Blowgun Walking Stick

[glistam]

Speaking of staves, I just finished my newest one, and it has a trick up it's sleeve. It's a fully functional blowgun!

I'm a longtime fan of blowguns and I think a lot of people underestimate them, believing they require poison to be of any use. Not so; a regular dart can kill many types of small game and fish. And I have personally witnessed a blunt-nosed stun dart to the temple knocking an adult out cold for a few seconds (um...long story).

The reason I made this was an experiment, to see if a functional blowgun could be made that a) actually had a enough mass and durability to be used as an impact weapon and b) could pass casual observation as nothing more than a walking stick.

While I have not done any impact tests, I think this looks hopeful. It is 1 3/8 red oak around a .40 Teflon-coated aluminum tube. While I recently saw a fierce physics debate over the power of .40 vs .62, I chose this for different reasons. I wanted the walls to be as thick as possible for strength, and most of my shooting experience is with .40.

The staff is 48" long and weights 1.75 lbs. It is a little bit on the thick side for a staff, but is actually thinner than my 5 ft. Brazo's Ironwood staff (which weights 2.5 lbs.) It has enough heft that I think it would wreck someone's day if I hit them with it, but is light enough to be held in the proper blowgun shooting position (see pic). For those unfamiliar with blowgun shooting, you are supposed to keep your hands close together near your mouth; extending your arm out for support actually makes the gun jar slightly when exhaling due to the movement of your chest muscles.

Only thing left is a cap or top to cover the mouth piece, but so far I've not found a design I like.

 

[ArfinGreebly]

And . . . Presto!

We have a new thread.

Looking forward to some details.

 

[glistam]

I should post a little about how I made it since there is a noticeable lack of information on how to do this efficiently online.

Now, first thing is that you can't just drill through a straight round dowel. That's almost impossible with anything over a few inches long, even with professional woodworking equipment. The only way really (and the way used by many native tribes) is to hollow out two halves of a cylinder. A modern day shortcut is to purchase two equal length pieces of half-round or half-dowel molding. This is where I got mine:
http://www.osbornewood.com/product/7106.48.cfm

You can use a round chisel to hollow out a space, but a much faster, cleaner way is to use a table router with a semi-circular (aka round nose) bit. Getting the depth right requires trial and error. Use two pieces of scrap wood, and cut a groove in each piece at the same depth. Put them together and see how round a hole they form. If you're putting a metal tube in, make sure it fits in there. Once you find it, use that same depth to make the grooves in the half-dowels.

Then just glue the two halves together (with the tube in place if using one) and put clamps along the whole length. Be sure to pad the clamps with fabric, rubber or layered duct tape to avoid marring the wood, and also to orient them both parallel and perpendicular to press the wood together and prevent sideways slipping. Once dry, sand the outside with sandpaper wrapped around it to smooth the seams.

You can form a mouthpiece by carving a funnel shape into one end, or by adding a separate piece entirely. The foot is a simply a rubber table leg cover from a hardware store, which come in a many diameters. I cut a hole in mine so I would not have to remove it to fire, but some may prefer keeping it covered completely to prevent dirt from getting into the barrel.

 

[hmphargh]

This is an awesome and novel idea. I'll be keeping my eye on this thread as well. I've shot a blowgun a couple times and have been impressed with the power that they have. With something this long, I can imagine you can get a projectile moving pretty fast.

 

[AlexM]

I love it!!! Imagination and practicality at its finest. My compliments. I would also say that you are correct about people underestimating blow guns.

 

[Deltaboy1984]

Great Idea.

 

[230RN]

I've got two of them and I was surprised by the power. Takes a pair of pliers to pull regular darts out of a hunk of composition board. Went right through 3/8 of that board, and that's hard stuff, what with the adhesive and the irregular grain.

Played with some .40 paintballs, too. Kinda fun.

Found regular office pushpins fly point first and make cheap fair practice ammo to about 30-35 feet. Beyond that the trajectory gets pretty rainbowey.

Got some golf tees, want to turn them down to .40 caliber to see how they shoot. Stealth darts. Biodegradable, doncha know, and left on the lawn, they don't look weapon-ey, they just look like someone dropped some golf tees. That's just in case you miss the garden vermin you were discouraging.

Terry, 230RN

 

[glistam]

Found regular office pushpins fly point first and make cheap fair practice ammo to about 30-35 feet. Beyond that the trajectory gets pretty rainbowey.

I was elated when I figured this out many years ago. It made for some spectacular practical jokes and later some boredom relief around the office with bulletin boards.

I'm currently working on reproducing this particular type of dart: http://www.alcheminc.com/traddarts.jpg
See, most dart designs such as those using wadding or cones are "drag-stabilized," relying on the back end being less aerodynamic in order to make the dart fly straight. Problem is this also robs you of velocity and thus, range. The darts in the photo above use fin stabilization and achieve the air-seal using a wooden bead. They notably share many characteristics with ancient Roman "Plumbata" and the modern pub dart.

 

[Sky]

In a country far far away they used to fish with blowguns. The dart was made from Bamboo with a wooden plug that actually was carved like fletching; front of plug was round and blunt but the core tapered toward the rear and there were 3 arrow type feathers cut out of the wood. The plug felt like Balsa and some were 2 to 3 inches long. These darts were extremely lite and some were 9 to 12" long. When fishing the wooden plugs assisted in pulling the fish to the top of the water for retrieval after the fish got tired or expired. Was cool.

I had a home where we would put the trash outside the wall past a big iron gate for pick up. There was a pack of feral dogs that started getting into the trash and doing a scatter job. Two times I used a bow gun and shot one of the pack in the hind quarter. The animal would yep and jump then turn around and pull the dart out laying it on the ground; great I could retrieve the dart. I believe the shots were taken @ approx 15 yards (through the gate) and it only took twice for the animals to stop coming around and making a mess..feral dogs are not stupid.

 

[230RN]

glistam, those look pretty darned effective!

I tried these darts:

(1)

(2)

in several rifled and smoothbore .177 air-powered and CO2-powered guns and cannot decide which are more accurate, although I'm mixing variables (guns and propellant and barrel length and how the shooter (me) feels that day, etc) here. The former have a better trajectory, though.

Now that I'm retired I may have time to make a more "scientific" study of this.

"Your" blowgun darts seem to conform more to the .177 darts in the first picture --head-heavy, finned rear, except the heads in yours are nicely streamlined.

Sky:

I had a home where we would put the trash outside the wall past a big iron gate for pick up. There was a pack of feral dogs that started getting into the trash and doing a scatter job. Two times I used a bow gun and shot one of the pack in the hind quarter. The animal would yep and jump then turn around and pull the dart out laying it on the ground; great I could retrieve the dart. I believe the shots were taken @ approx 15 yards (through the gate) and it only took twice for the animals to stop coming around and making a mess..feral dogs are not stupid.

Twue, twue, vewy twue, and that's twue of magpies, too. When I was working, they'd wake me up too early every morning by their quarreling right outside my bedroom window. I guess they were either arguing over who was to go to which road kill or maybe telling dirty magpie jokes. They were pretty raucous.

I didn't want to actually injure any of them, just get them the heck away from my window. That's why I wanted to use the trimmed-down golf tees, but I never got around to it. I ended up just using my slingshot to rustle the branches around them to get them away and the problem seems to have been solved that way.

I guess they found another pre-work-day "coffee shop" for their discussions of work assignments.

I figured the golf tees, which measure about 0.445" across the head and need trimming to .40, would be ideal since someone finding them on the ground would be no big deal --"stealth" darts, if you will.

glistam, good luck on your walking stick experiment, but bear in mind that if the po-po don't know what it is, they'll assume the worst, and you might get tagged for a concealed weapon violation, especially if you try to get it through any kind of security check point. I know that's not your intent, but keep that in mind. You'd be surprised how many times my solid wooden regular old hooked-handle walking cane has been x-rayed.

Thanks for the info on how the primitives made their blowguns.

Terry, 230RN

PIC CREDITS:

(1) http://www.airshooter.co.uk/acatalog/177_Calibre2.html

(2) http://www.scoreshot.co.uk/darts-umarex-rifle-pistol-x100-p-288.html

 

[glistam]

Good news is we don't have any legislation at all that covers blowguns in my area, and even if there was, there's case law on the books that just because you can't tell what a plainly visible held or unattended object is when looking at it, does not make it "concealed on or about the person." Besides, it is for all intents and purposes nothing more than a wooden tube that happens to have rubber on one end. Naturally any sort security checkpoint, be it a court house, gov building or private company is another matter entirely, and something I would never do having been that guy who's cane was x-ray'd

My main motivation is actually avoid freaking the sheeple. My area is very suburban with lots of nervous whitebread folks that don't "get" hunting, self-defense or various martial pursuits (including target practice). Worse yet, they're often morons from a legal standpoint ("I thought blowguns/crossbows/knives bigger than your palm were illegal everywhere!") What they don't know won't hurt 'em.

 

[230RN]

Heh-heh. I figured as much, but like your mother, I thought I should say it.

Like, "Don't run with scissors," doncha know.

Like, "You'll put someone's eye out with that thing," doncha know.

And don't put this



on your walking stick / cane / blowgun.

Folks will think it's a device for looking up girls' skirts, and boyyyy, will you be in trouble then.

Terry, "Just Like Your Own Sainted Mother," 230RN

REF:

Home page for the Extreme Focus Targeting System shown above:

http://www.blowgun.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=174

 

[Jason_G]

Glistam, I like this a lot. I may have to scrounge up some wood and tubing.

Jason

 

[230RN]

ETA, FYI

After years of wondering about it, I finally trimmed down a wooden golf tee to fit in my blowgun and tried it.

Don't work.

Apparently, the Center-of-Gravity (CG) is too far behind the Center-of-Pressure (CP) to give them any "arrow stability" and they tumble in flight.

Dayam.

So I searched for "golf tee" and (not being a golfer) I was amazed at how many variations there were which might have the CG ahead of the CP. Here are some possibilties:


http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQwuScPZWC2AUag7I0ZFYL8NAZVF1-2eqFV3TKYhfoyDwXspDOzmPlzfnM

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQp6I0KivcW9kDvbxoHrvr-Y_5elFpk2kPAY9sxQKKsD6Xsc_u8Kij9y2I

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRT264vhcB6at7KgDaG4PWHk65S5vv3lFbUvmoYVjvniGu_dgnU4Wu9nw

But these are outside of the "design parameter," which was "cheap and innocuous (stealth) blowgun dart missiles."

Well, as Thomas Edison once said, after trying hundreds of things for his light bulb filament, "The experiments were successful. Now we know what doesn't work."

Just contributing to the State of the Art of blowgun missiles and moving Science forward.



Humbly submitted to the Academy of Blowgun Arts and Sciences, I remain,

Terry, 230RN

 

[Bobson]

That's a great idea. I'd like to try it.

When walking with it, do you just keep one dart inside the tube, ready to go? or would it fall out?

Also, is it sturdy enough to use as an actual cane / impact weapon?

 

[glistam]

When walking with it, do you just keep one dart inside the tube, ready to go? or would it fall out?

Also, is it sturdy enough to use as an actual cane / impact weapon?

I don't walk with it "loaded." That's largely impossible to do without the dart just sliding down and if the tube has enough friction to prevent this, it will make for very poor shooting velocity. The most that would be possible is having the dart partway out the top and clamped with something. There is a trick for shooting at downward angles though, were you put a tiny piece of tape just inside the barrel, but this only works with tail-drag stabilized darts.

It's 1 3/8" thick red oak, with only 1/2" used for the tube, so it's definitely sturdy enough to use as a walking aid. I also feel it is usable as an impact weapon, with the absolute worst case scenario being that the glued seams break on impact, separating it into two halves and a metal tube. That won't make the 1.75 lbs heft hurt any less. I'm thinking of adding thin steel bands around the top and bottom to hold it together for this purpose.

 

[Sky]

Actually one of my old blow guns had a rubber cap that would hold the dart gently but when the gun was brought up to your mouth you could push the dart a tad bit forward with your tongue (kinda like cocking a hammer with your tongue??) It was a great way of holding the dart even if a down slope shot was to be made. Some of the fishing guys would hold the darts between their lips because of the angle of shooting down at a 45 or 60 degree angle( no rubber?) Anyway a double rimmed mouth piece with two thin rubber flanges That would allow the dart to be gripped with pressure but not so much a good tongue push would dislodge the dart for shooting might work.

 

[230RN]

<completely and unforgiveably off topic>

Ever try sliding a strong magnet down a non-ferrous metal blowgun tube? Very interesting how Lenz's Law works.

http://regentsprep.org/Regents/physics/phys08/clenslaw/default.htm

I found a strong neo magnet from one of those shake-to-charge flashlights which slipped neatly into one of my blowgun halves --24 inches in length. Dropped it down the tube and it took about 1 1/4 seconds to come out the bottom.

Really spooky 'sperimink.

Proves you should not make darts out of magnets.

</completely and unforgiveably off topic>