Anyone know anything about how to make a rather good blowpipe, or links to such information??

Assuming that you want something else than the most simple blowgun which should be rather easy to construct, the USPTO will yield some useful results. Use the patent numbers 6,588,413 and 4,103,893 (didn't have the time to have a closer look at them) or even better do a search yourself using the term "blowgun".

Thanks Rhadon, but I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean...forgive my ignorance, and please explain. I've tried searching 'blowpipe' and all similar stuff on Google and all the rest, but there's nothing.

ps. You're right in assuming that I'm looking for something more substantial than a basic peashooter. The situation is that a gang of drug users have taken over a sports field near where I live, and they seem to like needles....

I didn't mean searching google but the USPTO (http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-bool.html).

Blowpipes are simple! A piece of 10mm Al tube , about 75cm long, was my favourite toy. Darts were made using sewing machine needles (nice and heavy) bound to a thin bamboo twig, with a tuft of cotton on the end. I could get these things embedded 10mm into drywall. Best of all, a sewing machine needle has a nice hole just behind the point, where you can put your favourite poison.

At work I used 15mm PVC conduit, firing a steel centerpunch through several carboard boxes, with air from a compressor. Not exactly long range, but still fun.

I may not be able to help you with your blowgun, but this may help you with your situation.

Unfortunately I too have seen many drug users 'take over' parks and other innocent areas where our youth tend to be. I highly dislike the blowgun idea. Where will you be shooting from? How far away? What will be the dart(laced or unlaced)? What do you expect to come of it?

To my knowledge, blowguns really can't shoot far enough for a covert situation. I question their effectiveness.

Their reaction to just being shot with a dart won't be pleasant. I go by a simple rule: If you can see them, they can see you. What are you going to do when they start looking around for the shooter? Assuming you want them away from the sports field, I'd suggest boosting up your tactics. Remember not only to take physical action, but to make them mentally aware of how you want them to respond. How you'd address that, I'm not sure. Firstly, watch your target. Make a note of their patterns.

After this period, you should begin thinking of a course to address the situation. This part, I'm really not sure what to do. If you're stuck on the blowgun idea, incorporate Tuatara's idea of using compressed air. I think a dart(or any object) in a bb gun would be the most effective means of delivering it, but I suggest you think of another plan. I'm sure if you seek another more effective plan, the other members may help you. Nobody wants drug users poisoning our wells of innocence.

I kind of agree that blowpipes not be the most effective, although they might be the most fun.
If you had access to a paintball gun and some cheap paint you could easily deploy anything from pepper spray to almost any sort of caustic gasses. get a dental syringe, like the ones ppl use to clean thier braces, empty the PB of the paint and fill it with whatever like or just grab some bulldog rounds (solid rubber rounds designed for PB practice.) and hit some punks in the nuts, fast effective and pretty decent on the range. It might not the most covert, I would make sure that if you do use a PB gun that who you shoot definatly doesnt know that you have a PB gun and that they can't find out.

Also, you could refer to the other topic on caltrops and other impediments of movement. Leave some notes in or around your traps and let them know what you want done, them out. That could be a little dangerous though just because you are leaving behind traps that could end up with collateral damage, or they could possibly trace you. One thing to keep in mind, if you can somehow get them in the trap right about the time that a pig "happens" to ride by with his spot light on, you could whatch while this mf'er gets his own and gets to be Justina instead of justin, in overnight lockup. Either way it all sounds fun to me, be creative with whatever you do.

But if you really want to go with the blowpipe idea...Go down to the local hardware store and just browse the plumbing section for awhile, remember that you would need a mouth piece and possibly a grip. Try to have the pipe as stiff as possible, and I would even start long and work my way down on the length, seeing what is the most effective, again be creative. All you need is in the plumbing and sewing section. Another thing, if you want to make some nice heavy darts, use sewing needles, put the needle through a tire valve cap and then use super glue with any kind of tail. Cotton would work, or you could search around the crafts section of wal-mart, k-mat or any of those "marts". Anyways good luck with whatever you do, and for the third any final time, Be creative!

dinkydexi: you should look for michael d. janich's book "BLOWGUNS-The Breath Of Death" published by paladin press.
it's a nice introduction to the topic but don't expect too much. His design for the "homemade exploding syringe dart" is horrible, because the darts are too heavy.
I don't think that a blowgun is the right weapon to fight against drug abusing individuals.
whatever you do: be carfeul and think twice about your actions.

Thanks to everyone for your contributions; it turns out that this is much, much simpler than I anticipated. Which is good, because I'm big on keeping things simple.

I nipped into a gas supplies shop today- as it happens there's one on the end of my street- and bought a rather nice chrome plated tube, 8mm bore and over a metre long. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a humble Q-tip fits the tube neatly enough to be going on with....so i just bit one end off and replaced the cotton wool wad with the straight needle part of a safety pin. Fuck me!! It must have gone over 20 metres, straight as an arrow!!

I will work on this and post the results for anyone who might be interested. BTW, I hear what some of you guys are saying about blowpipes not being the best weapon for the situation, and I don't disagree with you...a hand grenade or 9 would be much more effective, for sure. But surely, surely we can agree that to stick these assholes with NEEDLES is APPROPRIATE?? I'm sure they'll get the POINT!

dinkydexy, I bet you are from the UK.

Please add your location to your profile. Trust me, you're not a super-stelath if you leave it blank, and knowing what country you are from helps us help you.

I remember buying a mouthpeice for protection in sparring. They are made of some plastic rubbery stuff which gets quite soft in boiling water. At the time I was trying to think of a use for it but nothing came to mind. It occurs to me now that this material would be perfect for a mouthpiece for a blowgun. It's soft and easy to shape, plus it's fairly durable and rubbery (easy to make airtight). Pretty much any sports store should sell them.

There is a "trade center" nearby in the metropolitan Detroit area open Friday nights, all day Saturday and much of Sunday. It's a glorified indoors flea market but has a number of shops you won't find downtown.

One such shop sells knives of every impractical sort, coins from many lands and times... and blowguns. These aren't the same as what you'll find at (Was|K|Super)Mart, these fellows range in length from 1 to nearly three metres in length.

Supplied with them are metal darts, and standing next to them is a collection of bits and pieces for making your own darts.

Perhaps a very SMALL impact-sensitive charge could be set behind a syringe plunger? If you want them to get the POINT, perhaps you could use a NEEDLE full of some REAL HOT STUFF. Potassium chloride and maybe some jalapeno extract?

I've been playing around with a couple of blowpipes and home made darts and found it best to use a pipe about 60 cms, I made the darts with sewing machine needles glued/taped onto a length of hollow bamboo ~8cms long then tape some medical cotton on the end, then cover the cotton with glad-wrap/plastic wrap/whatever you call it so that when you blow on the pipe you dont get little strands of annoying cotton in your mouth. The sewing machine needles break occassionally due to the fact that they have a hole near the tip that makes them a little fragile, but when shooting into solid objects like wood. I've tried using pins, nails, and also knitting needles, which all seem to work ok but just arent sharp as the sewing machine needles. If I could sharpen up the knitting needles I'm sure they'd be a lot more durable but I don't have a knife sharpener/grinding block handy and using the concrete isn't tooo effective. Also I experimented with heavier darts, first by filling the bamboo with nails and then by using metal shafts etc. but I found they're too heavy and drop considerably after only 5-10 meters. My mate and I made some darts replacing the needles big nails with the heads facing out (bludgeoning as opposed to pericing) and played around shooting eachother in the backyard.....quite effective and left some nice bruises hehe so we went down the park to see if we could hit any birds with any accuracy and we found that the needles are fairly useless in killing the bird as they dont do much damage and occasionally just fell out after a few seconds of flapping around, but the bludgeoning darts broke bones etc etc. I'm kinda wondering what type of material I could make a stomp bag out of to get some more pressure into the tube...any ideas would be helpful, thanks :)

You can use a large bottle or other container made of soft plastic (not PET drink bottles). There are several clothes washing procucts that come in suitable bottles.

All you then need to do is run a tube from the bottle to the blowgun, and stomp on the bottle.

Why not pet drink bottles? I would think they would have ideal soft plastic for the intended use.

Thanks xyz, never really thought about using a bottle considering the normal 2ltr softdrink bottle usually takes some effort to uncrush after being stood on. I'll try out a softer bottle when I finish off some bleach or laundry liquid :) I Tried using an inflatable toy and cut a decent hole in it for better airflow but its hard keeping it inflated in time to stomp it and even then it finds some way to pop and ruin the fun :(

IDTB, the reason for not using PET drink bottles is that they do not go back to their original shape after being stomped on, and it can take a long time to get them back to their original shape.

The plasic laundry cleaner bottles that I was talking about will regain their orignal shape in a second or two when you stomp on them.

Not pertaining to blow guns, but if you're going to pull a covert stunt like this, you're going to need more than just a weapon. It sounds like this has wooded areas near it, so I think a Ghille Suit would be perfect. I could tell you how to make one but I wouldn't get the details right, just search google for "Homemade ghille suit". Basically what it is is a cargo net (or tennis net for that matter) with jute twine (what burlap is made of) dyed to match the surrounding area. You end up with a full body suit that looks like Cousin It, and is great for blending in to the environment. Since we're going with the sniper tactic anyways, I also reccomend you work in a pair, a spotter, and a shooter, and have adequate entry and escape routes, maybe backup if things get ugly.

I'm afraid this thread has taken a nasty twist; just a few weeks ago a 23 year old pregnant girl was raped on the land where these human beings have been hanging out, and it appears that all the subsequent police activity has served to move them elsewhere.

On the subject of blowpipes in general, I'm certainly gonna try out the kinda squashy bottle idea; obviously this is a rough and ready means of producing a short blast of compressed air, and maybe I'll be able to develop that and build a pretty powerful weapon. I've been looking in toy model shops at these air-powered rockets you can buy...

hey everyone.
the way I make my arrows is by making a paper cone and making it fit to the barrel than i put a needle or a toothpick(depends on what i want to use it for) trough the tip and tape or glue it.
as a barrel i ussually use a piece of pvc pipe,it just can't be any more simple than that.
@dinkydexy are you a kydex fan to,if so, what do use it for?

I once took an old cheapy paintball gun and inserted a blowgun barrel in it by wrapping it with duct tape until it was a tight fit.
Then just used blow gun darts from the local army navy shop. You have to load them one at a time like a standard blow gun though, I got really good power. I put an airgun laser on the gun and from 20 yards put a 4 inch long dart 1.5 inches deep into a piece of treated 4x4 lumber. Plus I shot my shed with it, and it went clean through my steel sided shed, not both sides just one,
and I was 10 yards away!

I used a standard .40 cal blowgun barrel and darts with the conicle shaped plastic ends.

Short, small blowguns and needle darts are great fun, but to be truly effective a weapon needs to deliver a heavy projectile with decent speed. Small blowguns fail at this. Needle and wire darts penetrate deeply due to their extremely small cross section ( = friction), but they do next to no damage to live targets, unless one hits the brain in a lethal spot. I know people who have had to use several commercial wire darts to immobilize a sparrow, and still finish the tiny bird with a boot.

Things change when the blowgun gets bigger. A .628 cal. blowgun is vastly more powerful than a .40 cal 'gun, just as a five-foot blowgun is vastly more powerful (and accurate) than a two-foot blowgun. Combine this with a heavy (40 - 70 grain) dart and you will have a real weapon that will make a painful bruise to a man with a blunt dart or kill a small game animal dead with a broadhead dart, at distances of <20 yards.

The power and range of a blowgun increases with the length of the barrel up to a certain point. An optimal barrel is just long enough that the dart exits the muzzle excactly as it reaches it's maximum velocity. This length depends somewhat on the shooter's blowing capacity. Tests have shown that the average shooter peaks with a barrel length of 88", while anything under 56" is markedly slower / weaker. Carrying a seven-foot blowgun might seem next to impossible, but it's surprisingly easy, even in thick woods.

The easiest way to get a big caliber blowgun is to buy a length of 18mm aluminum electric conduit ( which has an inner diam. of just .628") and glue a mouthpiece on. I have used the sawn-off bottoms of cheap plastic "wine glasses" that have just the right funnel shape and size. With a couple of dollars and 15 minutes of work, you'll have a blowgun that is just as accurate and deadly as the best commercial models.

Efficient blunt darts can be easily made from 2" domehead screws. Just put a cone on one (on the sharp end), and you'll have an accurate, cheap dart that will do some serious damage to living and non-living things. These work well only with a large-caliber blowgun.

I made a simple blowgun out of an arrow shaft (cut off the coned end and pulled out the piece of aluminum that the arrow head screws into). beauty of this is that you can make 2 or three and conect them with 1 inch pieces of tube that have an inside diameter equal to the outside diameter of the arrows. This allows for easy transport, and allows you to vary the length of the gun. They are basically what the commercial ones are made of and is probably the straightest tube you can find.

I made darts out of sturdy wire.I used approx 4 inch pieces. I scored them along one end so that it would catch the cotton. I used two different types of points, one you just sharpen the tip into a cone, and the other (my favorite) is to pound the tip of the dart and when it has flattened out enough it can be ground into a triangle and sharpened (if wire thick enough).

Now if you can manage to fire at people without being seen it works because people tend to react to pieces of wire striking them and sinking in about 2+ inches (many people underestimate the power of a blowgun, you can pin a squirrel to a tree with wire darts and have to go up with pliars to pull it out of the tree, because it is too difficult with hands.) people panic and run away (usually).

Now if you want a better weapon and arn't afraid of who will see you, you should use the "toys" based off the indian design that the street gangs used to use around here. It consisted of a 12 inch nail that had a stabilizer tied around the head of the nail made of string (about 20-60 strands tied to it.I guess depending on how thick the string you use is) the other end is flattened and sharpened into a point of sorts. and a groove is cut out about 1 inch from the "point". The "launcher" was a piece of metal bar (another 12inch nail would probably be good enough [wood works too has to be thicker though]) with heavy duty elastics tied to one end in a loop (bungee(sp?) cords, or innertubes from bikes would work). Now to use you would hook the elastic into the groove of the nail, pull back holding where the stabilizer is, aim to the best of your ability and let go. (basically its a slingshot type device). The speed these things have is enough to seriously F*ck up anything in its way.

Well if anyone can actually make sense of what I just wrote I'll be surprised (it doesn't easily transfer into a "short" reply).

Also both the darts and the 12inch nail can kill a person quite easily. So make sure you are willing to risk that if you are going to use them. Lastly I posted this for educational purposes only....

well I think if you shoot at anyone and the dart makes a poor hit.
They won't panic because it doesn't hurt like hell ,they will start searching after who shot them and they will want revenge.If you get cought by a bunch of stoned and pissed off junks after you shot them with a blowpipe,then most likely you will have your blowgun shuved up youre arse(at least that's what I would do after someone shot me with a blowpipe).
so be shure you won't get cought,and always take a heavy backup weapon with you for safety(rather safe than sorry),or you could leave some smoke bomb's to cover youre retreat

I havn't had much experience with paintball guns except for the pump action kind which are like the only legal ones in this country. They have a sort of slot in the side which opens up when you pump it. You can see the paint ball fall down into place when that happens. If you just left the hopper off and pumped the thing back I think you could insert a blow dart into the gun there. Anyone understand what I am talking about?

I have found that spokes from bike wheels ar very good shafts for the darts, and the threads on the end is very good for holding glue on the end. Quick trip to a local scrap yard will get you a few for cheap, unbending is easy enough. 10 seconds with a grinder, or 10 min with a file will give a good point.

Paper cones I think work the best, not much air loss. Make sure the volume of the pipe is less than the volume of a good breath, take a three liter bottle filled with water and turn it upside down in a sink, and lead an air hose in it, a good breath and a little math will tell tell you the optimum length of pipe for greater power and accuracy.

Yeah I make my darts out of bike spokes aswell. They are pretty heavy and don't go to far but when they hit something they get wedged in pretty hard. I cut the frilly edges off some of my mums place mats while she wasn';t looking to use as the feathery bits on the end. They work well.

here is a very good link for making the blowgun as well as the darts
http://www.polar-electric.com/Blowgun/Index.html#TableTop

Cold Steel sells a big blowgun(.625 magnum).
It comes in 4 ft. ,and 5ft. and you can bye a 2ft.extension.
They cost 19.99,24.99,and7.99.
They are adertised to have a range of 20yards+
(You can order a free catalog on the web it comes with a More Proof DVD)
They sell bammboo,stun,broad head,and mini broad head darts.
I plan on geting one for small game hunting.