DIY Bazooka

Health and Safety 19 comments

DIY Bazooka coverBazooka : How to Build Your Own
Lewis
1993

Submitter: This explosive title came in a box of donations. [From the back cover, image below:] “Simply follow this procedure step by step, and before you know it you’ll be blasting away like Rambo on a good day.” I think this is the same imagination that has been taking place in our bathrooms lately. Easy to say this went to recycling bin.

Holly: The good news is that WorldCat doesn’t show any library holdings for this book. The better news is that its subject heading:

Bazookas — Design and construction — Amateurs’ manuals

only matches this one title in WorldCat. Apparently no one else cashed in on the lucrative publishing industry of DIY bazooka manuals.

I know we’re Awful “Library” Books, but indulge me in this one anyway. It’s too good to pass up. And by good I mean awful.

bazookas back cover

DIY Bazooka contents

Bazooka warning

DIY Bazooka parts list

Bazooka materials and tools

19 comments

  2. we had a toy bazooka when i was a kid. most dangerous toy in the neighborhood. blue plastic missiles that left marks!!

    1. The hellion boys 2 doors down from me had one of those.

      Eventually all the moms said NO and the missiles “disappeared”.

      1. Hellion needs to be more commonly used. Hazardous toys for people not old enough to really realize what they do and are doing, less commonly used.

        1. Thanks! Mom had a big vocabulary and wasn’t afraid to use it, even about the neighbors.

    1. I’ve just now looked at it too, and neither am I.

      Picturing the plastic parts blowing up and it becomes less bazooka, more shrapnel.

    2. Because it wouldn’t work, because it would work a bit too well or a bit of both? Purely out of morbid curiosity, I hasten to add.

      1. Some of it could work – as far as rapid evolution of dangerous amounts of heat. Certainly @Lurkertype vision of a shoulder-mounted pipe-bomb could happen.

        1. When I took a good look at the ingredients, my thought was “exothermic”.

          If the heat gets strong enough fast enough, bits of the bazooka or the bazooka-wielder might get melted.

  4. I’m wagering heavily that this book would be in very high demand in Ukraine right now!!!

    Meanwhile, the few copies I see online at the moment start at $40 and up, so if your library has a donation sales department…….

    In other discussions, I can see that many, MANY librarians would be of a philosophical bent that would patently refuse to shelve such a book, or for that matter just about any books about firearms maintenance, construction, etc. Which, of course, would make it a perfect candidate for “Banned Books Week,” right?

    1. Maintenance I could see, since if you have a firearm legally, you can legally maintain it in good condition. Construction is something that is closely regulated and changing – I am hesitant about a book that describes what could be OK for anyone at present and require a FFL or similar next month. If it was clear on the different sources of law, that they change regularly, that it is the user (manufacturer) that is responsible for verifying they are in line with them, and what agencys to contact (ATFE?, FBI?, state police?, county sheriff?) then I would feel fine. The ones that didn’t say anything, had a fig leaf disclaimer (like this one), or ranted about the EBIL GUBMINT would get a no.

  6. We had neighbors call the cops on us one day when we were kids because we were playing with squirt guns in our own front yard on a hot July day.

    My parents were mad at the neighbor for not simply talking to them first. It was harmless play.

    1. I wish I could recall the exact number; a local paper published a memory of some now-old dude who remembered playing in his science teacher’s pumpkin field, getting taken home by same to be scolded, and – once teach was at the other end of their front walk – hearing his parents think out loud what a blowhard he was. It was his earliest memory of an adult siding with him v. another adult.

  7. I had to look for the publisher – Paladin Press. I figured it was either them or Loompanics. I used to have the catalogs for both publishers back in the late eighties – More out of a sense of morbid curiosity than anything else. They published other gems like “Ragnar’s Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives”, “Hit Man – A Technical Manual For Independent Contractors”, and a wide variety of other topics. Both publishers have gone out of business in the past 20 years.

  8. Just a quick reminder about WorldCat – It lies. You have to subscribe to the OCLC product First Search in order to be seen in Worldcat. Our library does not, so we don’t show up. But there is a workaround using Connextion.

    4 Libraries have this in their collection. This includes the Library of Congress.
    State Locations
    CA albrs
    DC DLC
    NC btcta
    OH baker

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