Something (I can't remember what it was) brought to my mind the memory of cap guns from the 1950s. What fascinated me wasn't the gun itself - it was the caps. They came on a rolled piece of paper designed to be inserted into the grip or hammer area of the gun, but the things one could do with the caps were limited only by one's imagination.
Everyone knew that you could tear the paper strip into individual caps, stack them up on the concrete, and then whack the stack with a hammer (or, more conveniently, with the butt of the gun). With enough caps, you could generate a substantial and very gratifying explosion. They didn't do well with fire or the heat of a magnifying glass - they burned well, but of course there was no explosion.
With a little practice, you could explode individual caps with your fingernail. This could be done on a rock or other hard surface, but the best way was to put the cap on your thumbnail and then explode it by scraping it with another fingernail. It didn't hurt - and it left a very satisfactory black smoke mark on your nail.
The ones I remember are different from the gun displayed in the video above; that one actually shoots some type of pellet. The ones I remember were basically noisemakers. But the explosions were great, and I can still vividly recall the smell of burning gunpowder.
Photo credit.
You could also lay the entire roll down on its side and whack it with a hammer. I didn't hear very well for the rest of the day...
ReplyDeleteOh, wow, your words just invoked a very vivid memory of the smell of exploded caps, a memory that has to be almost 60 years old of my Hopalong Cassidy cap gun that went with my Hopalong Cassidy cowboy suit I got for my eighth or ninth birthday.
ReplyDeleteI remember those rolls of red paper with little nuggets of "gunpowder." You stuffed a roll in the gun and pulled the free end out at the top so the first nugget was under the cocked hammer, then when you pulled the trigger the hammer was released and hit the nugget. Bam!
Gosh, reading Swift Loris' comment, I just smelled exploded caps, too! How I loved my cap guns!
ReplyDeleteI had a camouflaged Thompson submachine gun- could really mow 'em down when the caps didn't jam...
ReplyDeleteI feel strangely old thinking on my first cap gun... Wasn't these flimsy plastic things today - it was a replica of a Detective Special snub-nosed .38, made of cast iron.
ReplyDeleteUsed those plastic rings instead of the tape, though. Was a very cool thing... I believe I lost it while 'in the wars' out in the forest around my parent's camp.
I had a "cowboy" capgun in the 70s. Ahhhh, the good ole days, before kids had to be protected from... well, everything.
ReplyDeleteLove these type of cap guns. Ones with the strip caps instead of the 8-ring ones. Great info and love your blog.
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