Nostalgia is it a thing of the past?

Cockney said:
I remember having a couple of spud guns, one you just pushed into the potato and the barrel slid like a pump and pushed the 'spud' out.
The other was like a revolver that you put caps in and loaded the 'bullets' by pushing them into a spud i think you had 5 shots with that type. Mums used to go mad because our clothes got little white spots from the starch and the butchered potato in your pocket.
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I think were more like Derringers, two spud shots per "go" ~ good fun and smell of spent caps :)
 
Box Brownie said:
In a like vein making my sure to wrap your thumb over your index finger when hand cranking a car........if it happened the compression kick-back could be brutal if the thumb was wrongly placed ~ oh boy!!!

PS being reminded of that I recall an old school chum at that time who bought himself a decent condition Morris Minor and the told us how it easy it was to handcrank........and who of us who had cars with need to crank that were difficult must have a problem. Suffice to say we pointed out his error by explaining his lack of compression was bad news on his "pride & joy" :LOL:
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You've never felt pain until your foot has slipped off the kick start of a 500cc single! :)
 
Box Brownie said:
I think were more like Derringers, two spud shots per "go" ~ good fun and smell of spent caps :)
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I know the ones you mean but these were little revolvers with a chamber that i think took 5. For reference they were about 1/2 the size of a 'Luger' water pistol.
 
Cockney said:
I remember having a couple of spud guns, one you just pushed into the potato and the barrel slid like a pump and pushed the 'spud' out.
The other was like a revolver that you put caps in and loaded the 'bullets' by pushing them into a spud i think you had 5 shots with that type. Mums used to go mad because our clothes got little white spots from the starch and the butchered potato in your pocket.
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Box Brownie said:
I think were more like Derringers, two spud shots per "go" ~ good fun and smell of spent caps :)
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I also remember messing about with an air gun called a Gat
Could do more damage with the extending barrel than the pellet
 
tijuana taxi said:
I also remember messing about with an air gun called a Gat
Could do more damage with the extending barrel than the pellet
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I remember Gat guns. My friend would wear an old army greatcoat and we would fire the gat gun at him wearing the coat only for the pellet to bounce harmlessly off the thick fabric.
 
Cartus said:
I remember Gat guns. My friend would wear an old army greatcoat and we would fire the gat gun at him wearing the coat only for the pellet to bounce harmlessly off the thick fabric.
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Sounds about right, Diana BB guns were also fun and relatively harmless
 
In secondary school, there was a boy who complained his father wouldn't let him have an air weapon.
It seems when the father was a boy, he and a friend had fought a duel with Diana/Gat type pistols.
The father was shot in the eye, just below the pupil. The pellet didn't penetrate, but it damaged the lens and left him partially sighted in that eye.
 
Cockney said:
I remember having a couple of spud guns,
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Remember the walther PPK style gun? spring powered, load as many dried peas as you could into the top and fire at will ( Poor old Will :D )

Box Brownie said:
Wow! you had a Go-Kart....... we had a good hill........but were content with a roller skate (the type you strapped to your shoe) and The Beano Annual strapped to it.
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Oh I did my apprenticeship on the Beano / Dandy Annual, rollerskate. While waiting for pram wheels :D

tijuana taxi said:
I also remember messing about with an air gun called a Gat
Could do more damage with the extending barrel than the pellet
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Webley & Scott Premier anyone? quite a heavy pistol, the actual barrel sat on top of the spring chamber.
 
I graduated from the gat gun to a Daisy powerline pump action Winchester style rifle.
Instructions said 10 pumps max.
Think I got 50 in it before leaning out my bedroom window and obliterating the streetlight cover outside my house.
I had old nursery style wallpaper on my bedroom wall with little pigs on it.
Used to put 3 pumps in the rifle and shoot the pigs.
My mum and dad were getting a new wardrobe and when they pulled the old one out, they discovered the pellets were going through the stud wall and into the back of their wardrobe:)
 
Seeing this at the Air Museum put me in mind of the light blue Ford Popular my dad ran when I was a kid. I think it was the only new car in the street and most of the time it lived in a parking garage several streets away.

Sony A65 8GB UnNumbered DSC02670.JPG
 
Cobra said:
Webley & Scott Premier anyone? quite a heavy pistol, the actual barrel sat on top of the spring chamber.
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I had one of these after the GAT and Diana, quite hard to break with such small leverage
Dreadful recoil too, powerful, but less than accurate.
Owning air weapons carried on into later years and took it up as a sport for a while
My last rifle was one of these http://www.marplerifleandpistolclub.org.uk/pictures/fwb6011.htm
Far cry from the air pistols and rifles of my teenage years
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Seeing this at the Air Museum put me in mind of the light blue Ford Popular my dad ran when I was a kid. I think it was the only new car in the street and most of the time it lived in a parking garage several streets away.

View attachment 247752
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Dad had an Austin 7 as his first car. I dont remember this but the photo shows their motorised (friction to back tyre) tandem with me in a sidecar. Apparently they drove me into a tree once. Could explain a lot. :)
20190309_170510.jpg
 
My dad had a BSA 22 Airsporter underlever spring rifle, which I now have, odd really as we lived in central London and he used to fire it down the side of the block of flats into some waste ground round a blind corner, Health and Safety would go mad now days.
 
MatBin said:
My dad had a BSA 22 Airsporter underlever spring rifle, which I now have, odd really as we lived in central London and he used to fire it down the side of the block of flats into some waste ground round a blind corner, Health and Safety would go mad now days.
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My pal had one of those.
It was a great air gun in its day.
 
MatBin said:
My dad had a BSA 22 Airsporter underlever spring rifle, which I now have, odd really as we lived in central London and he used to fire it down the side of the block of flats into some waste ground round a blind corner, Health and Safety would go mad now days.
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Were they the ones with a flip up loading port?
I had a Mercury which I think was its break barrel counterpart
 
Yes it flipped up automatically as you pulled on the underleaver
 
There were pistols that took small, gold coloured balls as ammo, I think they were called 'Sekeiden' or something.

They weren’t very powerful anyway.

I did have a 'Johnny Seven' OMA (One Man Army) gun and quite a few of my friends had the spy attaché case, 'Secret Sam'.
 
What about the Airfix "FN Rifle" with its grey plastic "bullets" and magazine loading? I had one of those! :D
 
I wasn't really a gun person. We made our own weapons. Bow & arrow with garden cane "arrows" (when sharpened they would stick in a tree!)
Crossbows if you could find a suitable old shovel handle. The force of them was lethal.
Slingshots and super elastic catapults.
Versions of those short spears with a notch in the end that you put a knotted string in to aid throwing. Depended what film we'd seen that week.
How did we not kill anyone?
 
Cockney said:
We made our own weapons. Bow & arrow with garden cane "arrows" (when sharpened they would stick in a tree!)
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Growing up in the country we'd cut our own, mostly willow or hazel (y)
 
Cartus said:
I did have a 'Johnny Seven' OMA (One Man Army) gun
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My cousin gave me his when he outgrew it.
I took it out to the fields to find something to shoot, and a teenager came over and demanded I give it to him. When I refused, he said if I didn't he'd hit me and take it.
So I shot him.
That prompted him to ball up a fist and run at me, so I shot him again.
That made him run away.

For a toy, those little plastic bullets packed quite a punch.
 
I had a .22 BSA Meteor when I was a kid (about 9 or 10) but I'd been shooting .22 LR on the school range for a couple of years by then. A friend of mine's family had a large property, about 20 acres, and he had an air rifle too. No-one seemed to think we required supervision, and we had access to a .410 shotgun if we asked.
 
MartynK said:
No-one seemed to think we required supervision, and we had access to a .410 shotgun if we asked.
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And you probably didn't, because you were sensible.

It's curious that a few years back I saw a couple of (too?) young farmers walking round the fields here carrying shotguns, and I really felt concern that they might have an 'accident'.
 
Cartus said:
I remember having a corrugated plastic tube about a metre long which you swung round over your head to make a ghost-like wailing sound.
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I think they made smaller ones shaped like snakes too.
 
Not sure if its been covered yet, but early 80's and before, in the pub at night a bloke with a wicker basket and a top with a picture of a scallop shell with eyes on would come in the pub and wander round selling bags of cockles, seafood sticks etc. Weird. But he always sold a few. I had the cockles a few times and always made my gums hurt for some reason. I particularly remember this in Albrighton near RAF Cosford, in the pub right down the bottom on the right.
 
DorsetDude said:
Not sure if its been covered yet, but early 80's and before, in the pub at night a bloke with a wicker basket and a top with a picture of a scallop shell with eyes on would come in the pub and wander round selling bags of cockles, seafood sticks etc. Weird. But he always sold a few. I had the cockles a few times and always made my gums hurt for some reason. I particularly remember this in Albrighton near RAF Cosford, in the pub right down the bottom on the right.
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We had them in Camden N. London too.
 
DorsetDude said:
Not sure if its been covered yet, but early 80's and before, in the pub at night a bloke with a wicker basket and a top with a picture of a scallop shell with eyes on would come in the pub and wander round selling bags of cockles, seafood sticks etc. Weird. But he always sold a few. I had the cockles a few times and always made my gums hurt for some reason. I particularly remember this in Albrighton near RAF Cosford, in the pub right down the bottom on the right.
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We had them in Sunderland. His arrival would always be greeted by a shout of "Here's the man with crabs".
 
One of the "Bad" nostalgic things from growing up back in the day was that every where you went, coach trips with Dads local club, family days in the car, etc parents would be chain smoking all the way there and back and of course the wives with their hair lacquered coiffures wouldnt let anyone open a window. So all the kids were sick as a parrot most of the time from the fumes. And that got put down as "travel sickness." No! FO its your manky smoke you ignorant 'tards! At least that's changed for the better!
 
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