How to Build M14 and M16 Antipersonnel Mines

Presenting US M14 and M16 antipersonnel mines - much feared and much hated by Grunts in the 'Nam!

'Toe-popper' and 'Bouncing Betty' mines were designed to maim - and were effective psychological weapons. When you know the whole area's riddled with mines, you don't wanna go a 'tramping.

For more information, contact the builder on Facebook. Enjoy!

Work is fun - but too much of it can turn you into a Drone. Or a Probe. or an SCV. So what do you build when you constantly get home at 11PM and have to wake up at 6AM? Easy!

Project 1: VN-era M14 'Toe Popper' Anti-personnel Mines!

Only 2.25 inches in diameter, these babies are designed to slow down a pursuing force by blowing off a couple of toes. Toe poppers. A dead guy can be recovered later - but a wounded teammate must immediately be brought out and evacuated.

Here's the best part: it takes something like six strong guys to haul a normal dude about a kilometer in any direction. Afterwards, everyone is sapped to the core. Thus, one M14 'Toe Popper' mine can effectively take out a whole squad. Cruel but ingenious.

The M14 mine is a small anti-personnel land mine first deployed by the U.S. circa 1955.

The M14 mechanism uses a belleville spring to flip a firing pin downwards into a stab detonator when pressure is applied. Once deployed, the M14 is very difficult to detect because it is a minimum metal mine, i.e. most of its components are plastic. Because of this, the design was later modified to ease mine clearance via the addition of a steel washer, glued onto the base of the mine.

The M16 mine is a U.S. made bounding anti-personnel mine. The mine consists of a cast iron body in a thin steel sleeve. A central fuze well on the top of the mine is normally fitted with a pronged M605 pressure and tilt fuze. Sufficient pressure on the prongs or tension on an attached tripwire causes the release of a striker. The freed striker is forced into a percussion cap which ignites a short pyrotechnic delay.

The purpose of this delay is to allow the victim to move off the top of the mine, to prevent its upward movement from being blocked. Once the delay has burned through, a 4.5-gram black powder charge is ignited, which launches the inner iron body of the mine up into the air (leaving behind the steel outer sleeve).

The charge also ignites a second pair of pyrotechnic delays. The mine rises to a height of approximately one meter, before one or both of the pyrotechnic delays triggers the main charge of the mine which sprays metal fragments in a 360-degree spread.

Another weekend build, done! Now time to make up for another week of NOT SLEEPING ...

Zzzzz .....