Blowguns
 

Well I picked up a blowgun at the flea market this weekend. It is four feet long, .40 caliber and cost all of $9 w/ 20 darts. Overall I'm impressed with the concept. It's really quite accurate and fast to pick up and the power is much more than I would have guessed if I knew nothing about blowguns. Using the dinky little 1/16" thick, 5" long darts that came with the tube I was able to plant them 3/4 of an inch into a sheet of plywood at point blank distance.

This is not a particuarlly impressive blowgun, though. The caliber's too small, made for kids. I knew that when I bought it I just wanted a test piece. Real hunting grade blowguns are .50 caliber or better and range up to seven feet long. Four or five feet is probably the sweet spot between portability and power. They also don't shoot dinky little darts but instead mini-arrows up to a foot and a half long with enough power to easily take a rabbit. Something really creepy to me was how quiet it was, very nearly silent. All you hear is a tiny puff of air when you exhale and then "thunk!" when the dart strikes the target. People report being able to take several shots at small game like squirrels without spooking them.

Based on my experience with blowguns I no longer have any use for a .177cal BB gun. The blowgun is cheaper, has a much stronger wounding effect, is lighter to carry and the ammo can be made or improvised very easily. You might consider buying or building a bigbore model as a means of harvesting small game. I think I'm going to go hunt some bunnies in my pasture.

Re: Blowguns
 

What about people who smoke a lot? Wouldn't they be a bit wind impaired??

Re: Blowguns
 

These guys have a .62:

http://www.blowgunsnw.com/

Re: Blowguns
 

When I was a kid,I made a blowgun from an old ski stick.It was an aluminum tube about 3/4" in diameter,the inside had a seam of protruding metal running the whole length where it was welded together.I took care of it by inserting a round file and just sliding it back and forth inside the tube until it was smooth.The arrow was a big sewing needle about 4" long and 1/8" thick+ a cone made from some crap.It was very effective and silent.Get an old ski stick for next to nothing at some thrift store.

Re: Blowguns
 

More on ancient blowgun culture here:

http://www.amazon-indians.org/

http://www.amazon-indians.org/matis/...ec2004_305.htm

http://www.amazon-indians.org/matis/...gun-Korubo.jpg

Re: Blowguns
 

I made my own out of a piece of bamboo once, and PVC pipe. I didn't go for a lethal blowgun, rather I used pins and cones of paper, which you drop some crazy glue into to hold the pin in place.

This is great fun to practice with, I was able to hit accurately at an amazing distance.

The same method can be used to construct a proper blow-gun, but you need to find a very long, sharp and thin needle. A piece of sharpened thin wire stock that won't deform easily is the way to go, or even wood as the tribal people use. For hunting small game, and birds and things it would work well.

Re: Blowguns
 

Blowguns are tons of fun. I wouldn't want to hold down the fort with them, but they are great for little pesky critters. I even have some plastic "stun darts" for mine. They don't do any damage, but sting like hell. Those are great for stray animals. They even make paintballs for the things. I bought mine at a flea market as well. The dude who sold me mine actually had a laser pointer rigged up to his. It was pretty accurate.

Re: Blowguns
 

Put a blowgun dart on a 80# pistol crossbow slide. Get your pliers out:s9:

Re: Blowguns
 

It still amazes me that the seemingly weak effect of blowing some air through the pipe can send a dart out with so much force. I guess low pressure plus high volume does equal out to some significant energy. I'll never get over how quiet these things are. A bow makes more noise.

I wouldn't want to repel borders with a blowgun either. I see it as a replacement for a BB gun or maybe a .22lr rifle for hunting small game and recreational use. That said I've seen pics of guys who have used theirs for hunting rabbits. A 1ft+ long broadhead dart can sail right through a bunny, I'm sure even without poison it would be bad news for a two legged predator. The author of the hunting book "A Sporting Chance" that deals with many primitive weapons killed a treed bobcat with two 22" long barbed darts from 70 feet, they penetrated two inches into the rib cage and the cat was dead when it hit the ground. Looked like it was around 25lbs of wildcat. Impressive.

Right now I'm thinking about making my next blowgun, probably from half inch copper pipe and about five feet long. Mostly because it is seemless, easy for me to get ahold of and I like copper. Seemless aluminum is probably more practical even if I don't think it's as pretty and if I had any sense I'd get one of those .62 caliber blowguns on order.

I see a lot of potential in a large caliber blowgun that breaks down into 3 16" long segments. It would fit inside a case inside most backpacks, assemble into a 4ft tube and have only two joints.

Thanks for the links, Mac. I'll check them out.

Re: Blowguns
 

QWAK.I used to make them out of an old piece of 1/2" electric conduit pipe and dry wall screws with a cone made out of DUCK TAPE! :s9:

In just a couple min. you got a blow gun that is fairly efective and if you put the dry wall screw on a grinder and remove the threds it will penitrate 1/2" dry wall!:thinkey::hahaha:

the DUCK

Re: Blowguns
 

I did this at work once! Only I used a nail. And rather than using my lung power, I used the hose with the blow nozzle right off the air compressor. 120psi really makes them sail.

Re: Blowguns
 

Here's a cool video demonstrating the awesome power of bad breath.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/742120...w_to/?logout=1

Re: Blowguns
 

QWAK,Satyr,Great minds think alike! :bull-buddy-icon:

I modified a push button air nozel so it fit like a pistol grip on a 4' piece of 1/2" condiut and yes it made them ZIP but not shure it was all that more powerfull or faster plus the hose and noise of the compressor was a bit of a problem. :s9::haha::haha:

BTW: I also experimented with marbels and ball barings don't hold a candle to a sling shot but looked impressive.:s9:

Just a thought:thinkey: but It has occured to me that an air compressor powered rifel could posably be adapted as a BB MACHEAN GUN that would be non leathal but very efective as part of a defence system yet relitively quiet so it would not draw too much attention. With pan and tilt controls and a camera it could be activated by remote from a computer virtualy any ware!:s9:

the DUCK
the DUCK

Re: Blowguns
 

Don't have any experience with this thing.

Don't want to start a new thread and don't
know where else to link it.

dtnwn

Re: Blowguns
 

http://www.wickedlasers.com/lasers/S..._GX-26-21.html :bull-buddy-icon:

Re: Blowguns
 

Hehehe.....http://www.xcalibertactical.com/products/strafer.html

Re: Blowguns
 

QWAK,Satyr,AWSOME BB GUN!:bull-buddy-icon: It shure aint a "RED RIDER" like I had as a kid! WOW!

the DUCK

Re: Blowguns
 

For something more affordable, you could always look into getting one of these...http://www.airgundepot.com/eaa-drozd.html

I've been too busy buying metals to go out and purchase one yet.

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Re: Blowguns
 

Just an update...

I was in the Tractor Supply Company store the other day looking for some seeds for my Fall garden. I took a look at their metals section and found the perfect, affordable blowgun tube. For under $7 they have a seemless half inch tube, 1/16th inch wall thickness, finely polished bore and four feet long. Even though it's called half inch it's really .62 caliber. I made a quick and dirty dart from some duct tape and a straightened length of 14 gauge galvanized wire and let fly at a piece of 3/4 plywood. The dart penetrated half an inch at two yards and probably would have done much better but since the wire was so maleable it deformed on impact, wasting much of the available energy. You could probably clean up the ends on this tube a little and add a mouthpiece if you want but honestly it's ready to work at is comes from the store. Just roll the tube as you would a pool cue to make sure it's straight.

In my reading I found some chrono data on 4 foot .62cal blowguns. Looks like around 350fps is reasonable to expect with a substantial dart and a little practice. Longer is better up to about 6 feet for most people but a 4ft tube gives you the great majority of the power. Full auto BB guns are cool but I'm done with BB or pellet rifles for hunting and I don't think I really have a use for even a .22lr rifle for hunting anymore. The blowgun has a much more dramatic wounding effect with a good rate of fire, ammo is free and easily improvised, it's silent, has good range and is very light weight. The accuracy is much better than a slingshot and there's no bands to break or wear out. With the right broadhead and a well placed shot I'm certain I could take down a good sized turkey with my blowgun. I'm going to have to say that as far as I'm concerned this is the ultimate foraging weapon.

It looks like some cultures added what ammounts to a bayonet to the end of their blowguns. I'd want a wall thickness of 1/8" on an aluminum pipe to feel confident with it but I can see where that would be very handy for dispatching a large animal that was critically wounded by not quite killed with a dart.

Re: Blowguns
 

comments on blowguns:

PLEASE BE CAREFUL THAT YOU DON'T INHALE THE DART. THIS HAPPENED TO A FRIEND AS A KID AND IT ALMOST KILLED HIM AND SERIOUSLY FOCKED UP HIS TRACHEA.

Re: Blowguns
 

Yes, do be careful. Breathe in through your nose and do so before you bring the gun up to your mouth. Just the same I highly doubt I could inhale a foot long .62 caliber dart if I tried.

Re: Blowguns
 

Rev, have you considered using poison of some sort on the tips of your darts? This way they wouldn't need to rely so much on deep penetration to kill, and could probably take down larger animals, or perhaps use smaller, lighter darts and be able to shoot them farther. I know there are still some tribes out there that hunt this way. They must use a special poison that can kill the animal but not taint the meat. Maybe something that paralyzes?

Re: Blowguns
 

When I was a kid my best friend's mom was into poisons. She kept a special purpose garden. I learned enough to stay the hoot'n heck away! Some poisons can be cooked out but one slip up out in the woods and it's all over for you 15 minutes later.

A half inch steel broadhead traveling at 350fps is going to bury itself severl inches into most smaller game animals and should be enough on its own. I've come across a story about a man who used a blowgun to hunt javelinas, pretty impressive. Worst case scenario is you cripple the animal's ability to flee, close quickly and dispatch it with a knife or blow to the head.

What you can do is dip your darts in the hottest pepper you can find. When it hits internal tissues like lung or heart the organ will seize. It's the next thing to poison and works more quickly. I recently read about how to extract the capsaicin from peppers and I'm cultivating habaneros. The orange habaneros and Scotch bonnet are around 300,000SHU's whereas the Naga Jolokia(aka Bhut Jolokia) is pushing 1 million! That last is the official world's hottest pepper. It seems that low humidity and hot weather produce the hottest peppers within a cultivar.

Re: Blowguns
 

I had a habanero once several years back. It's making my eyes have that about-to-water feeling just thinking about it. :D

Here's some guy eating a Naga:

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Ouch!

Re: Blowguns
 

Awesome! That guy's a pepper enthusiast and you can still tell he's feeling it! Sounds like weapons grade to me. :coolbeer:

I think I'll grow mine indoors in the unairconditioned wing of my house. It will be the hottest, least humid environment I can provide. Man, Naga Jolokia is why I grow heirlooms!

Re: Blowguns
 

QWAK,What a GREAT survival food that way you can "SHIT FIRE and SAVE the MATCHES!" :hahaha::s10::haha::haha:

HE HE HE I Don't remember when I first heard THAT saying but I figuer it MUST have been by some one who LOVED hot peppers! :D

the DUCK

Re: Blowguns
 

This is probably true. I have found that well-watered chillis are generally pretty mild in flavour / heat. Sometimes to the point that the flavour is diminished.

Full sun, and a hard life = mega hot peppers. :)

Re: Blowguns
 

What about this one.........it's not as big a cal - but should still work well.

http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ZWN125-422-51.html

Re: Blowguns
 

It'd be great for indoor use, practice, messing around etc but honestly it just isn't big enough to develop any real power. You have to think of it like a firearm. There is an optimum barrel length for any cartridge. Shorter than this and you waste power because the powder doesn't have time to fully burn. Longer than that and you're just wasting power on friction in the barrel. With a blowgun your lungs have a certain capacity. You need a blowgun big enough to accept all or most of that air, no bigger or smaller. For hunting you're going to want at least a 4' tube of at least .50 caliber. There is a tremendous difference in power between my 4 foot .62 caliber and my 4 foot .40 caliber. A lot of blowgun hunters use tubes six or even eight feet long for maximum power but I find that length to be a bit akward to carry around in the woods. Four or five feet of .50 caliber or above is enough for most purposes.

Like I said for between $2.50 and $7 you can get a large caliber steel or aluminum tube four or five feet in length and the darts are cheap and easy to make. By all means buy a ready made kit just for convience to get you started though, I did. It's a lot of fun!

Re: Blowguns
 

What metal was this?

Copper would seem to be not very good as it bends too easily.

Re: Blowguns
 

I was wondering how they got that hole down the middle, now I know.

http://www.amazon-indians.org/page18.html

Re: Blowguns
 

Check Rev's last couple sentences in the post just before yours. :wink:

Re: Blowguns
 

The copper pipe works much better than you'd think. I don't know if it's an alloyed copper or pure copper but it has plenty enough rigidity to be useful. You don't want to smack it hard against against immoveable objects but that goes for steel conduit too. The seamless tubing at TSC is thick walled aluminum.

Aluminum does have an advantage over copper and steel in blowguns. Copper can develop fouling in the bore so needs more maintenance to stay in top shape and steel can get rusty.

I found a 100 pack of bamboo skewers about 1/8th wide and a foot long for $1.50 at the store last night. With a little duct tape I'm going to turn these into ultra low cost practice darts. When I make the duct tape cones I roll the tape sticky side out first, then I put a second layer of tape over that so there's no sticky surface inside or outside the cone. After that I stick the cone in the blowgun as far as it will go without forcing it, make the spot and cut it for a perfect fit. Then I insert the dart shaft through the cone and use more duct tape to hold it in place. Works well.

Re: Blowguns
 

......... ?

Re: Blowguns
 

yuo could probably get that stuff ,what do they call it, from castor oil beans, and put that on the darts, but Im not sure how fast it works

the amazonians use CURARE which is the base for various paralytics they use in anesthesiology -- and "lethal injection" executions

Re: Blowguns
 

How about a picture? Is it aluminum? Steel? What would it normally be used for?

Re: Blowguns
 

Thanks. I've used 1/2 inch pvc but just messing around. When I was little I made great darts from needles, thread, feathers, and glue. I wrapped the thread round and round in a nice curve, adding glue here and there. When the glue dried, the darts were fantastic, light and landed with a powerful thunk.

Skewers are a great idea.

I don't quite understand the part with the cones.

Re: Blowguns
 

Woops, sorry about that... you asked what metal the tube at the store was, and I was just saying that Rev had said in the post before yours, steel or aluminum.

Sorry for the confusion. :smile:

Re: Blowguns
 

Rev, how much resistance do you go for when you're figuring out how large to make the cones? I'm guessing too little and you won't be able to get any power behind it, but too much and you'll blow real hard and it won't go anywhere. Do you try to make the duct tape cones very symmetrical for a stable flight, or does it not matter very much?

On the end of the tube where you blow, do you just leave a straight cut on the end? How do you put your mouth to it... I'm guessing lips inside slightly as you can blow out a longer breath when your lips are pursed slightly.

Just found this video on Youtube... he makes a blowgun dart out of a wooden skewer like you mentioned, and for the cone part he uses some plastic sheeting, kind of like an overhead projector sheet. Seems like it makes for very conical and lightweight butts on the darts, and even leaves a bit of a catch for your air, since it's hollow at the back:

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He uses and air gun to fire these, but damn! Wouldn't want to be shot with one of those. :no_ma:


edit: Here's another sweet video: he makes a blow gun out of rolled up magazine papers. Also uses and aluminum tube. Pretty strong shots, and accurate.

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Re: Blowguns
 

Rev answered my question. It was thick walled aluminum.

I messed around blowing things through 1/2 inch pvc today. Next is to make some practice darts and try those. If that works well then I might try the aluminum. It would be cool to have a real one made of wood though.

Re: Blowguns
 

There are lots of good videos on YouTube.

One of them show a fellow shooting paint balls through a blowgun, and they look quite effective but don't cause the damage that a dart would do.

This is to my liking as they would be good for practice.

Does anyone know the diameter of a paint ball?

Re: Blowguns
 

Symmetry in cones becomes increasingly important at longer ranges. The practice darts I've been making fly well for about 50 feet, then destabilize and crash to the ground at about 100 feet. I haven't been too terribly careful with getting everything just right.

I have been experimenting with a new system though. Instead of a cone I've just been wrapping tape around the shaft of the dart just ahead of the center of gravity. It is faster to make in quantity and yields acceptable results. I suspect the darts would fly better with the addition of fletching at the rear of the dart.

As for the fit, I aim for tight enough not to be easily shaken out but loose enough that even a light puff of air will get them started.

These are just practice darts though, for recreational purposes. For hunting I would want a 3/16 to 1/4 inch thick wood shaft or 1/8 steel shaft. There are other potential materials out there but I haven't experimented with them. I would like to get a chrono and test some darts made from lightweight arrow shafts and other possibilities till I find the sweet spot for a hunting dart. I suspect that a streamlined drive band just forward the point of balance with fletching in the rear will be the best in terms of power, speed, accuracy and ease of manufacture.

Paintballs are available in a variety of calibers but .68 is the most commonly encountered and is the standard if you play paintball with the guns.

Any round pellet that fits the bore is also a good blowgun projectile. I'm still looking for some marbles that fit but I've liked what I've seen with clay and wet paper towel wads. My .40cal blowgun came with some plastic stun darts that look like little shotgun slugs and work rather well.

Re: Blowguns
 

Are you talking about these? :rolleyes_m:

I have one bush in my yard that has been overly productive this year. I'm harvesting 20+ peppers a week from this plant and have been since June. You can see both the ripe fruit and blooms in this picture.

I've cooked with them, gave them away, made wine with them, and lately I've been dehydrating them and grinding them in an old coffee grinder. I have quite a large supply of Scotch Bonnet powder.

This stuff is potent. If you open the cork, it makes your eyes water and chokes you up. I like hot stuff and wouldn't advise adding more than 1/8 teaspoon to a pot of chili.

Blorp

Re: Blowguns
 

Very nice Blorp!

My interest in blowguns has now kindled an interest in hot peppers and I discovered that my naga jolokia wasn't the real deal but instead was PC-1, a hot but not nearly as hot Indian pepper. I did manage to get ahold of some real Naga Jolokia seed, much more expensive, like several dollars per seed. Weather is cooling a bit but I think I'll try to germinate at least two of my five seeds and raise them indoors.

I've been thinking about adding some Carribean Red or Chocolate Habenero for a little extra kick over the Orange Habenero. With my current pepper assortment I have a pretty good spread of heat. Jalapeno, Tobasco, PC-1, Orange Habenero, and Naga Jolokia.

Re: Blowguns
 

Ice could be formed and removed from small pieces of pvc and then quickly used. The pluses are these would be easy to make, should work quite well, plus if the ice was aimed at an obnoxious cat or anything like that then it would melt quickly... not I'm suggesting such a thing.

Re: Blowguns
 

Ice isn't a bad idea.

Heh, I made need some ice now... I was just planting my new (real) Naga Jolokia seeds. Just for fun I decided I'd sniff the seeds. Not too much of an effect but I could tell they were hot. So, being the genius I am, I decided to lick one with the very tip of my tongue. Ever play around with Fox Labs pepper spray? That's the kind of heat we're talking about here, plus some pain. And flavor too, oddly enough. Not bad. At any rate this is the real deal, if I had bit into a pepper instead of barely licked a seed I'd be in a world of hurt right now... and it still made me cough! This stuff should yield some good juice!

Re: Blowguns
 

Yikes! Makes the guy in the video who took a big bite of one look even tougher. You could play some nasty tricks on folks with peppers that hot. :confused_ma: