Bob Dickason - Splurge Guns

Splurge Guns - special effects

For Bugsy Malone.

Splurge guns for Bugsy Malone

This page has received a suprising number of visitors since I put it up in about 2000. Previously I had one picture and a short paragraph on my effects page. After a while the search engines catalogued it and I started to recieve emails about the guns.
It seems that many groups want to stage Bugsy Malone and that each create their own solution to the splurge gun. Some of them have been kind enough to pass their results on to me and I have put them up as links from this page.
If you would like to contribute ideas and/or pictures, please send them to me and I will (eventually) post them on this unofficial splurge page.

All ideas accepted, none vouched for, no responsibility accepted. Let's enjoy it! ;-)

Want to get splurged...?

Bob's design - about 1989
Paul Young built the gun in 2002 and improved on it.
Sandy and Jim Calderon's design (2005) is simple and effective.
Gary Aylward has made the gun, also in 2005, and offers detailed instructions in an Acrobat file.

Bob's design

I've had a number of requests for information regarding the machine guns with which the young gangsters shoot each other.
Here are the details of my design as used in a production in about 1989.

These splurge guns fire shaving cream and are constructed around a common (cheap) plastic bicycle pump.

Pushing the trigger handle forward hard gives a really good splurge and by jerking the trigger handle forward two or three small shots can be fired without refilling.

The barrel of the tommy gun is the pump itself with a small piece of electrical conduit glued to the end.

The stock, handles and magazine are of plywood rather than particle board because of its strength and low weight - as you can see from the top picture which shows a gun used in the production, the guns get a bit of a hiding during the show.

Filling the guns requires a little practice. I found that by cutting the supplied flexible connection (from pump to valve - shown sticking out of the barrel in the top picture) in half, a small diameter plastic tube would fit inside it. This tube also fitted into the nozzle of a pressure can of shaving foam. With a little tape the joins were quite satisfactory.

Filling requires the trigger handle to be pulled back slowly as the nozzle of the foam is depressed - too fast and you get too little foam, too slow and it goes everywhere.

The picture at left shows the slot cut in the base of the PVC tube which enables the trigger handle to be pushed forward and the slightly larger cutout which was necessary to get the pump into the PVC tube.

Enlarging the pattern below should give approximate shapes for the 'wooden' pieces.

If you make any splurge guns or found this page useful or interesting, I'd love to hear from you.

Paul Young built the gun in 2002 and improved on it. Click here.

Sandy and Jim Calderon's design (2005) is simple and effective. Click here.

Gary Aylward has made the gun, also in 2005, and offers detailed instructions in an Acrobat file.