This could have been a problem in 5th grade. We had a kid that blinded himself shooting paper clips. He was shooting at GI Joes and the clip bounced off floor, into the wall, and into his eye.
His iris was white with scarring and he lost his vision.
Serves him right for shooting at American GIs.
See this innovative contraption HERE
What did you guys make?
Yep, being ‘invincible’ as a child, I was lucky not to lose an eye after being shot with a b-b gun during our ‘war’ games. My eyesight was reduced but I still have my eyeball….and a well learner lesson.
Jellybean, we had a rule, a shots below the shoulders. We were all lucky to not have an eye put out.
A guy I knew from the neighborhood shot his eye out in a school rubberband/paperclip fight.
It was decades ago and the dudes name was Pete.
I am lucky to have all fingers and toes…
@Jelly
When I was a boy, a kid in the neighborhood did get shot in the eye with a BB-gun. I remember his eye was all read and swollen, but I don’t know if he lost it.
I never played war games with other kids using a BB gun, but I used to set up my toy soldiers in a front line and shoot them all down, collect the BBs, reload the gun, and do the same thing all over again. Lotsa fun.
I was more into goodies that had fuses to light, and their repurposed components.
When I got older I got more cautious and settled for hang gliding over HAZMAT dumps.
In 6th grade, we would feign going to the bathroom and once in there we would grab a bunch of toilet paper, soak it with water from the sink, and then hurl it up at the ceiling where it would stick and dry out. It wasn’t until this asshole teacher not our own looked up at the ceiling while taking a piss one day did he notice all the paper mâché and hence, that was the end of our fun.
we used to put paper feathers (flights) on straight pins to make miniature darts. these things flew straight and long! our targets were each other, especially in the classroom. i remember one time one of the guys was answering a question posed by our nun teacher. catholic school so we stood up to answer questions. he stood up and we got him with five or six of these things in the back. in classic form he said, “i’m stuck.” teach thought he was stuck on the answer to the question. we just broke up laughing. almost 50 years later i still chuckle about it.
@Jerry — You’ve reminded me of the good ol’ days when paper straw wrappers were loose enough you could shoot the wrapper by blowing into the straw. In the school cafeteria we’d dip the end of the wrapper in ketchup and blow them up to stick on the ceiling. We had a pretty good collection of red and white stalactites up there!
Well, actually they didn’t stay red for long but instead turned into a kind of shitty brown color as they aged. (-:
Dang, @lurker, you bring back the good ol’ days, too! We would take a straight pin, point sticking out front of four round toothpicks then the whole thing wrapped tight with thread (which held better than Scotch tape which was a rare treasure back in those Dark Ages). Add the stiff paper flights, cruciform at the back end between the toothpicks, and they were dandy flyers!
When chapstick runs out, you unscrew the grooved stick inside and pull down the plunger to the end. The unscrewed grooved stick sticks way out. Put the cap on, smack the protruding end, the cap goes flying.
Lighter runs out, remove the spring and wrap it around the flint. Use another lighter to heat the flint until it glows red. Slam on ground. Instant fireworks.
Ball point Bic pens had springs in them, we used all the parts to shoot the silver cap end out the barrel…I can’t remember the instructions though. May have to go get a pen and try to re-create it.
I discovered you could cut the end off a shoestring leaving about a 1/2 inch of string, then force a sewing needle into it, leaving the string as a seal. Shot out of a soda straw. I was careful, but another kid went too far and shot one into a kids hand. I was swept up as the mastermind.
Our favored soda straw projectile was manufactured by making a tiny paper cone, dropping the pin down into it followed by a drop of glue.
Semi-automatic rubber band pistol:
https://youtu.be/KC_KUKlKouQ
Rubber band paper wad shotter:
https://youtu.be/O84VizY_HiE
shooter…
We made our darts with kitchen matches. Swipe one of the old man’s razor blades, push the blade about 1/4″ into match, then make a cross slice. These were for holding the wings we made out of our notebook paper. Swipe one of mom’s sewing needles to push into the other end, and viola! I remember somebody, think my bro got one stuck loosely in eyelid, no injury, so we thought it was funny.
One of my first jobs was working at an old music store. We made blow darts out of spare saxophone parts (needle springs and cork).
If you’re wondering if they posed any real threat, a few times I missed my target and the dart stuck in the wall.
It was a cinder block wall.
Paper match cannon:
Small diameter metal tube about 1 1/4 inch long.
Thin metal strip bent into a “V” soldered to one of the tube to serve as a bipod.
Wrap match head w/ foil, insert in tube leaving the head exposed.
Apply flame to match head.
Range- maybe three feet.
I still have mine around here somewhere…
Some kid named George Underwood punched another kid in a fight over a girl. Here’s how that turned out:
https://theuijunkie.com/david-bowies-eyes/
https://youtu.be/UAy5VFfiRKo
Bolt bombs – two big bolts screwed into the same nut with a few kitchen match heads scraped into the nut prior to assembly. Give it a toss onto a hard surface and BOOM!
It blew apart once, got Jimmy right in the nuts, and I spent the rest of the day in the principal’s office.
We made blowguns out of 1/2″ electrical conduit. Darts were strips of glossy magazine paper rolled into cone shape.
A toothpick could be added to point for extra penetration.
When I was 16 I worked in a factory that made electrical supplies. Commercial electromagnets were made from stacked of thin metal E-shaped,razor thin laminates sandwiched together with coils around each leg of the “E”. Individual laminates could be thrown like ninja stars. Old-timers could throw them 100 feet and get them the stick into the wooden columns a half-inch or so. People did get hit but it was considered bad form to complain to management. Revenge was not unknown.
I made passing grades in ALL of my high school classes.
We just chased each other with stems of sand spurs and threw them as hard as we could, aiming for the back…hurt like hell and hard to reach when lodged between the shoulder blades.