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Spectacular Fireworks

By STANLEY STEWART

IN making fireworks, if the experimenter will always remember that he is dealing with explosives that may pop off at any moment, and therefore exercises constant caution, the various spectacular night displays outlined in the accompanying article are not any more dangerous than playing with matches. At all times, care must be exercised in grinding the ingredients. Always use a clean mortar; always powder each chemical separately; when mixing, dump the required portions on a sheet of dry paper and use a wooden spatula, or gently rock the contents of the paper back and forth. Although the author is only fifteen years old he has been making fireworks for years and has not yet had one of them go off accidentally. The formulas contained in this article have all been tried and tested, and will be found to work perfectly. Read the rest of this entry »

Gee, good thing they pointed it out or I would never have guessed that left mask is supposed to be a jew…

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The Secrets of Mask Making

How to prepare gorgeous false faces for use as decorations or in theatricals and entertainments

By KENNETH M. SWEZEY

BEFORE men made idols, they made masks. It gave them a great sense 1 of primitive power—the power to create new faces that could transform a man in a twinkling to god, beast, or devil. As if by magic, they could emphasize a hundredfold any human mood and bring to real existence the strange and colored caprices of their imagination.
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Your Own Inflatable Dome: Make It from a Kit

PS brings bubble buildings into the realm of the do-it-yourselfer: Take your choice of kits in three sizes—or start from scratch if you like By A. J. HAND / PS Home Workshop Editor

You’ve read about the new air-supported buildings that can cover hundreds of acres [PS, Mar. "73]. Now take a look at some pneumatics designed with you in mind. They’re inexpensive, easy to build, and adaptable to a whole range of uses.

The basic single-skin plastic dome, inflated by a small blower, can be used as a studio, greenhouse, pool cover, outdoor rec room, camping or vacation shelter, portable classroom, or storage facility.
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Ash Trays From Beer Cans
When he discovered that his squadron’s cargo-passenger plane had been stripped of ash trays by souvenir-hunting travelers, Chief Dan Baffari of the Navy went to work with a hammer on several beer cans. He came up with a big stack of attractive ash trays that cost only a few cents apiece. The trays have metal hooks which clamp over the ribs of the passenger compartment, holding them conveniently and securely in place. The tops have flared cigarette rests and the trays are painted with shiny fire-resistant paint.

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Experiments With Oxygen FOR THE AMATEUR CHEMIST

A few common chemicals supplied by the druggist and simple apparatus is all that is required to produce these interesting experiments with oxygen.

by VERNON TRACEY

OXYGEN experiments form a very interesting field of adventure for the amateur chemist due to the fact that oxygen is one of the most active of the chemical elements. It readily combines with most any other element to form many different compounds. These compounds of oxygen and other elements are known as “oxides” and the process of combination is called “oxidation,” or more commonly known as burning. We see examples of oxidation every day in the burning of fuel, but this is not very active when one considers the fact that the air is only one-fifth oxygen, the rest being mainly nitrogen and a small percentage of other gases.
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Goofy Inventions Are His Hobby

By ROBERT E. MARTIN

RUSSELL H. OAKES, a Waukesha, Wis., advertising man, is the Thomas A. Edison of goofy gadgets. Out of his basement workshop have come more than fifty screwball innovations. They have no practical value on earth. They will never see the inside of the Patent Office “Gazette.” They have no standing as labor-saving devices. Yet, they are making their inventor famous!
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Escape from the pressures of modern life … Relax in contemplation after building

Your Very Own Meditator

By KEN ISAACS – PS Design Consultant

“I vant to be alone.” When Greta Garbo made her often-quoted remark, years ago, it may have had a deeper meaning than escape from pursuing newsmen. Everybody occasionally wants to be alone. We all need privacy to renew ourselves for the fast pace of modern living. As old as mankind, this inner need is today more urgent than ever before.

Mohandas Gandhi was perhaps this century’s outstanding exponent of aloneness—of personal meditation. Gandhi’s inspiration came in part from our own Henry David Thoreau, who fled to the natural solitude of Walden Pond. And Thoreau was a real soul brother of our western man of the mountains, naturalist John Muir.
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Toys from Discarded Lamp Bulbs

Spectacular Fireworks Amuse and delight the kiddies by hooking a lamp in which the filament has been broken in circuit with a spark coil. Brilliant, weird, light results.

Gravity Experiment To prove that cold air weighs more than warm, heat the air in one of two carefully balanced bulbs from which the tips have been broken. The cold end will sink.
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$97 Movie Made in Hollywood Kitchen

By A. L. WOOLDRIDGE Special Hollywood Correspondent

Stories of millions of dollars spent in producing ten-reel movie features have given the public an idea that only a big company could produce profit-making motion pictures. But Robert Florey, expending $97 produced a picture which is making him wealthy!

IF YOU have $100 or so, plus a few old cigar boxes, a motion picture camera, and a desire to break into the movies—as who hasn’t?—you can be your own director and cameraman and produce a motion picture worthy of exhibition in theaters throughout the country. That is, you can it you are as skillful and economical as Robert Florey, who cut his sets from cardboard and cigar boxes and produced in a Hollywood kitchen, at a total cost of $97, a movie which is being shown in United Artists theaters all over America.
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Bring “Ghosts” to your Home for Winter Parties

by RICHARD COKE

The author’s adventures as a “ghost detective,” ferreting out the secrets of fraudulent mediums, led him to the discovery of the ingenious methods of creating phantoms which he describes in this article. Using these simple stunts, much fun can be had at house parties, and you can easily convince your guests that you are in private communication with the supernatural.

WHEN Eddie called me up from the “Times” office, and asked me to come along to Madame Y’s “Wednesday night circle,” of course I accepted the invitation. For over fifteen years I’ve been spook hunting, but with no material success. When spooks have rattled tin cans in a cabinet in imitation of a “Model T,” I’ve always found that the spooks had bone and muscle. When nebulous images have appeared on photographic plates, I have always found the foggy patches due to exposure to X-rays, radio-active salts, or maybe to a tiny pin-hole in the bellows of the camera. Read the rest of this entry »

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Martian Invader

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s MPs interplanetary space traveler.

By Walter A. Musciano

HERE is a model that can truly be described as being “out of this world.” The Mechanix Illustrated Martian Invader, a flying saucer, is a most unusual control line model airplane patterned along the lines of those luminous disks that thousands of people have seen during the past several years.

The twin bubble canopies housing the Martian pilot and his robot and the rakish fins add to the futuristic appearance of our saucer.
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Farm Tractor and Power Plant Assembled from Old Auto Parts

This combination tractor and belt power plant was made from a Ford engine with frame and front wheels, a 1925 Chevrolet gear shift, an International Model-S truck rear end, and two binder wheels. The frame was shortened 18 in. by sawing each side in two 23 in. from the rear end and lapping and drilling for two 1/2-in’. bolts. The rear end was set on two 2 by 5 in. steel posts with U-bolts around frame and axles.
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