Introduction
In the mid 1970s, one of my friends was Jeff Skow. We were both in the same grade at Luck High School (graduation class of 1979). He lived 1/4 miles from me in the West Denmark area. The Skow family had a black lab that would join Jeff and I on our adventures in the local woods. I remember they raised a family of grey squirrels in a tree next to their house. They were very tame and would eat out of your hand.
Jeff and I would ride our bikes down at the Little Butternut boat landing and see how long we could ‘pop wheelies’. We would ride bike a mile into the town of Luck and buy orange soda from a machine at the Standard Oil station. We spent a lot of time walking around the ‘Henriksen pond’ – skipping rocks and damming up the creek that fed water into it. We built home-made rubber band guns and eventually bought wrist-rockets (high-tech slingshots). I still have both!
One thing we did that was a lot of fun was built and shoot off ‘Polish cannons’ (aka ‘tennis ball cannon’). It was a simple contraption that had an explosive component that wasn’t too dangerous. After building the cannon, we would set it off at the Skow house.
The Build
First, get three soda cans. (Some use 4 or 5). In the 1970s soda cans were made of stiff, sturdy material (tin-plated steel). This was before the transition to mostly aluminum. A tennis ball would fit perfectly snugly into them to be used as a cannonball. Cut the top and bottom out of two of the cans and just the top of one of them. On the one that still has its bottom, use a screwdriver and poke one hole near the bottom. Tape the other two to the top of the one (no such thing as Duck Tape in those days!). For ours, Jeff and I constructed a wooden base so it could be placed on the ground in a stable position.
Firing
Get a can of lighter fluid and squirt some into the hole of the bottom can. Insert a tennis ball into the top of the contraption. Get a bicycle pump and pump air into the hole where you inserted the lighter fluid to atomize the lighter fluid in the chamber. Stand clear of the top of the cannon and light a lighter at the mouth of the lighter fluid hole. BOOM! The tennis ball gets launched high into the air! Jeff and I would have our baseball gloves on and try to catch it before it hit the ground.
Videos
If you search on YouTube, you will find many videos of people shooting off similar contraptions. Some use four soda cans. Others user Pringles cans instead of soda can. I personally found it disturbing how casual and reckless people were when firing their contraption.
Jeff and My Other Contraptions
These photos were taken recently. I have both the wrist rocket and rubber band gun in my memento box.
