sounds like my dad....
as a little kid I had one of those translucent guns with a flywheel that made a whizzing sound and shot out sparks when you pulled the trigger which I thought was pretty cool at the time - one of my favourite toys.

At least it was until the mechanism locked up.

Now my dad is a mechanic and pretty good at it generally speaking but around the house he sticks firmly to the 3 laws of DIY - gaffertape (for things that move but shouldn't), WD40 (for things that don't move when they should) and suspicion coupled with tinkering (for things that appear to be doing what they should be).

So... we have something that didn't move that should do and was duely doused in WD40. he pullsed the tigger and the flywheel spun a little and made some noise so he figured it'd probably be alright after some use and gave it to me to play with.

Which was fine until a few seconds later when a rather enthusiastic pulling of the trigger produced sparks which when coupled with the flammability of WD40 caused the thing to explode in my hand.

Really funny in hindsight, but not a happy child at the time.....
( Sack Sack - Norfolks laziest, Fri 26 Oct 2007, 15:03, Reply)