Small Scale Military Headquarters

For something different i decided to make a 1/18 mortar that fires a round. I made it from the shaft of a pen, a pen refill and spring from a star wars toy.

The spring is inserted in the shaft of the pen, which is the barrel of the mortar and the pen refill iinserted inside the spring. I cut the top of the pen refill so it is a flat surface, which will strike the mortar shell and launch it out of the mortar.

I cut the shaft of the pen to the appropriate length for a mortar in this scale, afixed a baseplate from an old Corps! mortar i had, used support legs from a New Ray mortar i had and painted it up german yellow.

I cut a hole in the base plate so the refill of the pen can slip through it. To fire the mortar i just pull back on the bottom end of the refill, which compresses the spring and then let go.

For a mortar round i used the tips of small syringes i had on hand (a couple of years ago i had to give myself shots in the belly in preparation for a procedure on my heart and being a forward thinking modeller, i kept all the syringes, feeling they'd come in handy one day). The tips are a small thick plastic knob with a needle inserted in the middle and fit perfectly inside my mortar.

I can fire these little mortar rounds about 15 feet distance and they arc about 6 1/2 feet high. I target them at balloons i have inflated. When (if) the mortar round hits the balloon it bursts the balloon in spectacular fashion, nice and ear ringingly loud. It usually takes several shots to find the range and aim but once i do i get pretty consistent with my shots....just like a real mortar.

I just put the finishing touches on an SS mortar crew to go with the mortar.

Is that legal in Canadia?

you still need a DigiCam.

and I concour about the Needles, they do come in handy at weird times when modeling...I used them to clear holes while painting, as make-shift stands for firearms and small bits, and sometime to scrib stuff where a brush is just too thick.

NEW FROM CORPS:

The Ferguson Mortar
Watch your kids wipe out the other kids in their neighborhood with only a little practice!


Dress up and play with your kids in colorful outfits.


Fun for the whole family!

Where are the pics??????

i'm finding the balloon busting thing is kinda fun. Good way to simulate explosions. I put a pin in the tip of the bomb on my razorback p-47 and dive bombed some balloons with it. Nice big bangs when i get a hit.

I also have used a bursting balloon to simulate the explosion from a roadside bomb with my FOV Bradley driving past......don't worry, the crew survives unscathed every time.

Nice loud, ear ringing bangs from balloons.......good cheap way to 'blow things up'.

May have to get an airsoft tank and fire some rounds at some balloons...

Punch out a small disc of plastic . Drill a small hole in the tube. Push the needle down with the disk insert a carter pin ( pin ) tie a string to it now you have a remote launch.

Cool idea.

Reading the thread title, I first thought you may have come up with something that might result in loosing a couple fingers...

Oh,... and don't fill the balloons with propane.

Kevin.

propane, eh?....hmmmm..

man this could be the YouTube hit....if it was video taped.

Cool idea! I have a toy soldier set made by the Brittains company that has a couple mortar crews with firing mortars. The figures are 1:32 scale and part of a line of "cheap" toy soldiers made by the company. The set has two mortars, each with two crew. The mortars are spring-loaded (operated by pulling back and releasing a spring-tab), firing little plastic rounds. The range is about 4-6 feet.

the range of mine is 15 feet. :p

You think bursting ballons is fun. You should try bursting insurgents with the 40mm auto grenade launcher on top of my MRAP. Now thats really fun!!!

tmanthegreat wrote:Cool idea! I have a toy soldier set made by the Brittains company that has a couple mortar crews with firing mortars. The figures are 1:32 scale and part of a line of "cheap" toy soldiers made by the company. The set has two mortars, each with two crew. The mortars are spring-loaded (operated by pulling back and releasing a spring-tab), firing little plastic rounds. The range is about 4-6 feet.

I have the same thing... Wait, are you talking about the German Deetail mortar or the American cannon because both shoot little projectiles?

A few years ago I got some little skeloton military figures at KBs and one of the accsecories was a firing spring mortor. It even came with little projectiles to shoot out of it but I use those little "soft air" ammo bullets to do my fighting. I can't remember the toy company that made those, but I woulda got many many of them had I known how cool they are for XD.

along the lines of my mortar that fires, i have just finished a 1/18 panzerfaust that fires. I replaced the shaft of the panzerfaust with a pen refill cut to length. I took one of my dragon panzerfausts and cut it about an inch behind the warhead and shaved the shaft down so that it fits into the hollow part of the pen refill. A piece of coat hanger wire attatched to a spring fits in the back end of the pen refill and is pulled backward and released for firing. It strikes the back end of the shaft of the warhead and sends it flying out the front end, just like a real panzerfaust.

Probably hard to understand when explained like this but it works great. My furthest shot went over 9 feet and struck a cardboard box about 8 inches off the floor. Average shot is about 7- 8 feet. I put a pin in the tip of the warhead and put some little tiny balloons along the hull of my trumpeter t-34. It's very accurate, i can usually hit the balloon i'm aiming at first time from 7 feet away, with a nice 'pop'.

I'm actually quite surprised and delighted by how well it fires. I'm going to cover the firing mechanism part with some cotton baton to make it look like the smoke discharged from a firing panzerfaust. I can easily reach into the cotton and pull back on the plunger to fire it.

The only problem with it is that warhead moves TOO fast. I was trying to get a scale velocity out of it but i'm about 50% faster than that. I realized there was no way to get a scale muzzle velocity and still have it travel an appreciable distance because while everything else is scaled down to 1/18, gravity isn't, so what this means is the the projectile falls 18 times faster than the full scale one, so it has to travel faster or it will just hit the floor a foot or so in front of where i launched it from.

Other than being too fast, it's just jim dandy.

Sounds cool.

What's next? A 1/18 flamethrower?

Stay away from aerosol cans.

kevrut wrote:Sounds cool.

What's next? A 1/18 flamethrower?

Stay away from aerosol cans.

A 1/18 flamethrower would be cool but a 1/18 scale nuke would be cooler .

hm....1/18 nuke, eh?

aferguson wrote:hm....1/18 nuke, eh?

That's right. A nuke muchroom cloud is about 10,000 feet tall. So in 1/18 scale that would be about 555 feet tall.
I think that we might have to swtich to 1/32 scale . That would be about 312 feet tall not that bad. I guess 1/32 scale does have it's uses.

the hiroshima mushroom cloud went to 60,000 feet. Might as well do something historically correct, eh?

I think homeland security might be interested in this topic.

aferguson wrote:the hiroshima mushroom cloud went to 60,000 feet. Might as well do something historically correct, eh?

Hmmm... So Hiro shroom would be about 3,333 feet tall in 1/18 scale . The Feds would notice that. Even 1/32 scale would be kinda big. Dare we go 1/144 scale ? That would be about 416 feet tall. That could work.

since i've been using balloons recently to simulate explosions, i think i'd use a really big balloon for an atomic bomb.

edit: i found my atomic bomb.

little boy:

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-Foot-Large-Phanto ... dZViewItem

and this one could be fat man:

http://cgi.ebay.com/HUGE-4ft-Party-Ball ... 18Q2el1247