That's cool, zorrro, I figured that was the deal.  I like your wry humour.  I'll try to dig out the number of the FM with the best information I can recall using. There were two or theree of them , but one especially stands out in memory!  I believe it recommended a sawed-off bolt as the "rock" used.  I'd like to try to get it to you through private email, if you don't mind.  Iy may be available on the internet, or the usual reprint places.  Thanks for everything, and I'll try to send you something useful, since you obviously realise the dangers involved!

thank you very much magnumslinger
i apreciate the info, just inquisitive purpose,  my chemistry and ballistics days are done and gone. 

It's not the number of people, at all.  It's the fact that it is designed to kill people.  It serves no useful purpose.
  Oh, and it's nice to have you back again Magnumslinger.  Haven't seen you for some time.

Thanks, for all the replies I  was just wondering how they worked and how there built.

Dear English, Zorro and Sean,

"TRUE, TRUE, TRUE!", on all of your last replies!  The pipe/zip"gun" IS better used as a club/ thrown projectile than as a "firearm"/bullet launcher!!  You are  the BEST type of people to listen to/read, because you KNOW what's real through experience and research, which is obvious from your posts and their content.  Most people are merely CURIOUS, and that's fine.  But I wanted to FINALLY get a free moment and say so.

I've been a little busier than usual lately, and hope to have some useful stuff to post soon!

Thank you, English for the kind welcome.  I get very busy sometimes, but always am thinking of my fellow slingers/primitive weapon practitioners here at this great forum. 

By the way, has any of you read Dan Brown's "Deception Point" (enjoyed "Angels and Demons" and "Digital Fortress", and LOVED "DaVinci Code"...fun stuff!), and his description of the U.S. Government's counterterrorism agencies possible experimentation with and use of "environmental" weapons, which used natural projectiles such as "ice bullets" and "melted sand", compacted dirt, rocks, ect, designed to blend/degrade naturally into the environment fired silently out of ultra-modern rifles, etc.(These "less lethal/less-than-lethal", and/or potentially lethal, but "less-than-detectable" weapons seemed only a step away from just scrapping the expensive, complicated rifle gizmos, and simply going back to the old sling!  A lot of it sounded like simply loading appropriately-sized ice balls into a cheap already available automatic paint ball gun, and bouncing them off of people's heads until they were neutralized)?  Or Alvin Toffler's "war and Anti-war?  Both of these books mention using nano-tech gizmos such as mosquito-sized helecopter drones to take video pictures of intelligence targets, and even to kill terrorists by injecting them with vasso-suppressing chemicals and the like?  (Sounds like the Russians could have made good use of similar devices in the recent school hostage tragedy.  Imagine a swarm of nearly undetectable microcopter closed circuit/hypodermic syringe platforms flown a few each simultaneously to inject some instant knockout chemical or fast-acting poison into each of the terrorists before they could have hurt anyone! Wow!)

Anyway, back to the real world...have a great week!

As many people here have said, making any type of homemade device that at one time or another involves explosive gases usually isn't in you or anybody elses best intrest. And as for these .22 cannons (aka zip-guns), unless you get the right type of steel, and a strong enough end-cap, then you are more likely to blow off a hand then hit anything. And in these days, when anything to do with homemade  explosives/ballistics is considered to be terrorist by both the government and civilian population, making anything that could be used to kill someone is highly frowned apon, and usually punished most harsly.

It should be noted that I have a high respect for the law, and would never break it in anyway. It just so happens that one of my hobbies includes the finding and saving of "sensitive" published works.  If one wanted to know more about making guns from scratch (for entertainment purposes only ofcourse) then they should look into these books; Home Workshop Guns for Defense and Resistance: Volumes 1-4 by Bill Holmes Published by Paladin-Press. You can by them direct from the publisher (paladin-press.com), or from your own means *cough* IRC *cough*. They are well detailed and the best of there kind, and a must for fellow information geeks like myself   .

(P.S. sorry for bringing up a dead topic, but I thought that the information could prove important/informative).

yep if your in prison, and you want too kill some one, or you need a cheap concealed weapon, I would go with a blow gun. you make the dart, out of some wire, and paper, the tube out of paper, and you got your self a blow gun and it cost you all of that $1?

you can even poison it (a little gross) by taking your own well..poopy and putting it all over the dart. Makes some nice poison i hear. prisoners use it alot.