How To Make A Cheap Kid's Size Blow Gun With Giant Pixy Stix And Some Other Stuff

My son is a big fan of the Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction books by John Austin. So I decided to share one of my own school day weapons with him. Growing up I called it the gutter blow gun because I could usually find all the parts I needed in the gutter on my walk home from school.

Since blow guns are illegal in California, (Did you know that?) we made it and played with it for about ten minutes then took it apart.

We started with the supplies we needed: a pencil eraser top, a cigarette butt, a needle or long pushpin, and a long plastic giant Pixy Stix.

Next we took off the metal ferrule and eraser from the pencil. This will be the body of the dart. It works best with cheap pencils. Trusty Dixon Ticonderogas are just too tough.

Once we got the metal ferrule off we pushed a needle through the eraser. It's a little tricky getting the needle straight. We had to insert the needle a few times before we got it right.

Then we unwrapped the cigarette butt to get the filter. 

The filter will be the dart's fletch. We twisted the filter as we inserted it into the pencil eraser. 

We gently tore the cigarette filter to open it up so it would fly better and fit snugly in our pixie stick. 

After loading it into the long plastic pixy stix we were ready.

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My son gave it a try. I warned him about not sucking in when the blow gun is loaded. I also let him know the blow gun has the same rules as his BB gun. Shoot only targets, nothing that's alive. 

Success! It went right into the fence. 

He was able to shoot accurately to about 15 feet after some practice with his new darts. 

Here in Orange County we actually had a blow gun expert that lived in Orange in the fifties and was profiled in Modern Mechanix. 

Have fun. Be safe. Don't bring it to school for show and tell.