Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
I
Soon they won't let you have a still or grow your own tobacco.
Alex
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They take the fun out of everything don't they.
A good friend of mine was given still for his 65th birthday by his wife. Now that's the kind of wife to hang onto!.
But he's been too busy to use it yet. His target is fortified wine rather than moonshine but it will be interesting to see what he can make when he gets going. And how long they put him away for if they catch him...
When I was a kid we made our own bows and arrows with sticks and string but they never worked very well. If you managed to get the arrow to land much past your feet you were doing OK. Shame, because we probably needed them to hunt dinosaurs for their meat back then…. But we did get a couple of shop-bought wooden bows too - plus a proper painted target with a straw backing - and those did work.
Other weapons of the time were the ever popular catapult, made from a forked stick and some strong elastic (lethal and surely now illegal) and the ball-point blowpipe (relatively harmless). The blowpipe was made from the hollow tube of a biro and fired slugs of chewed up paper.
Cap guns were also in vogue but were used mostly by smaller kids. The bigger ones tore a strip off the paper rolls of “caps” , scrunched them up and made bolt bombs. The bolt bomb used two bolts screwed into either side of a single nut, with the wedge of caps sandwiched in the middle. They were thrown in the air, preferably above a concrete surface and made a satisfyingly loud bang when they hit. The whiff of danger came from wondering if one of the bolts would be blown out and possibly strike one of the other kids. Not recommended.