The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys

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I once electrocuted myself by touching the live and neutral pins of a three pin plug.
Being pedantic, you only get electrocuted once. You can have lots of electric shocks though.
50,000 volts seems to have quite an effect.
 

Brains

Legendary Member
Location
Greenwich
I used to teach science in the mid 80's. One class experiment I did with 4th years (year 10) was "Fractional Distillation of Oil". Not allowed now. Has to be dem. done in a fume cupboard.

I teach shipbrokers, and one of the subjects I need to touch on is this, the problem is anyone under the age of 40 has no idea what I'm talking about.

H&S aside would it be possible to run the experiment on a large balcony in the City, what would i need ?
(As its 40+ years since i last saw it done)
 

guitarpete247

Just about surviving
Location
Leicestershire
Any body else on here have a Gat air pistol when they were young? We carried them around like a toy :smile:

Shaun
Had one but what was more fun was little spud gun that was powered by cap power. My mates and I replaced the bit of potato in the bullet with home made flash powder. When fired you got a 6" flash.
On one part of my paper round a few scrotes held a snarling hound waiting for me to ride past. One day I let it get within a gnats of my trouser leg before letting it have it. Never happened again. Also never saw the dog again. Feel a little (only a little) guilty. I believe dog was more shocked than hurt as we were always shooting each other.
 

vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
I teach shipbrokers, and one of the subjects I need to touch on is this, the problem is anyone under the age of 40 has no idea what I'm talking about.

H&S aside would it be possible to run the experiment on a large balcony in the City, what would i need ?
(As its 40+ years since i last saw it done)

There's plenty of videos on Youtube.....
 

vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
We also had fun with attaching jetex motors to toy cars on "Hotwheels" track.

As much fun as this?


Yes and I remember the holes that I burned in the hallway lino with them.

Then there was the occasion when I made a Jetex powered Duplo car, set it up in the long science corridor, opened the fire exit at the end to allow egress into long grass, place the pupils behind me and the car before I lit the fuse then watched in horror as the car did a U-turn 10m away from us, take off and fly at high speed and knee hight towards us. The kids managed to find traction as the climbed the corridor walls and would have done the rock climbing community proud.

Their response once the smoke had cleared:

"Do it again sir!"
 

Spinney

Bimbleur extraordinaire
Location
Back up north
I remember 'do it again, miss' being spoken mostly while I was white and shaking - once from putting rather too much potassium into the water, and once from not noticing a crack in a gas jar full of oxygen before sticking something (I forget what) burning into it - luckily none of the brats were hit by the bits of flying glass. My little frights pale into insignificance compared with Vernon's though - chapeau!
 

midlife

Legendary Member
Wow, not seen one in the flesh since I was stuffing darts into it and trying to shoot them into next door's shed. Airsporter was to die for in the 70's :smile:

I always wanted an air rifle that looked like an FN that was in the window of the fishing / shooting shop I used to buy things from in Hull.

Shaun
 

tyred

Squire
Location
Ireland
I can confirm that you get a loud pop followed by funny burning smell and a few blobs of red plastic on the bench when you connect a single red LED across about 20 (whatever I found in battery cupboard in the physics lab) PP9 batteries wired in series.

Connecting a car headlamp bulb to the mains is not a good idea. You do get nice bright light which you will still see whenever you blink for the rest of the day but bulb life is rather short....

It wasn't me but someone thought it would be fun to leave the chuck key in the lathe in the metalwork room and start it up. The caretaker was most unhappy about having to replace a window frame...

Turning of the fuel cut off valve on the bus belonging to a visiting hockey team was good fun when the bus airlocked going out the school gates, blocking the onl;y entrance and the headmaster couldn't get his car out to go home :smile:
 

Tin Pot

Guru
Any body else on here have a Gat air pistol when they were young? We carried them around like a toy :smile:

Shaun

Yeah my mate had one, we'd shoot each other with it. Throw darts and knives and each other too.

I guess that's a bit frowned on these days at primary age anyway.

Hmm. Maybe that's why I never thought Jack Ass was funny.
 

Andy_R

Hard of hearing..I said Herd of Herring..oh FFS..
Location
County Durham
As part of our scouts photographer badge, I show them how flash powder was made. I also show alternate firelighting tecniques using chemical reactions - pottasium permangenate and glycerin is one of the most requested ones. I have also started Campfires using magnesium ribbon and home made thermite. (BTW, Campfire is scout speak for a bonfire with a sing-along. Small fires for cooking on are known as cooking fires...)
 

midlife

Legendary Member
[QUOTE 4070604, member: 76"]Oh yes, in fact, look what I have in the garage! It doesn't shoot anymore, although I would like to get it fixed.
View attachment 113730

I also had lots of air rifles, Meteor, the Mercury then an Airsporter S, wow that was bloody great![/QUOTE]

As an aside my Meteor was stolen from my flat in London. The local paper reported that local crims were using a high powered air rifle to put out the windows of houses and flats, if nobody turned on a light or moved around then they assumed it was empty and burgled the place ....

Shaun
 
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