Since Phils pass has been plundered by pirates, i figured I would post my lesson now since I have no idea of when it will make it back to this area. My lesson is: How To Manufacture a Real Prison Shank.
This is one type of shank made by prisoners that requires no metal. All that is needed is an empty shampoo bottle, toilet paper, some news paper, a pair of socks, and matches. Cool water is also needed which is available in the cell. This can be made from start to finish in about an hour, but it takes a long time to sharpen it. (like several hours) I'll be cheating on the sharpening part by using sandpaper since I dont have 3 days to sit and scratch it against the ground.
You first want to gather your supplies:
Keep in mind the onion plays no roll
Only the shampoo bottle, TP, news paper, and the socks. I'm lazy.
Next you want to make your "donuts". The donuts are the heat source that we will be using to melt the shampoo bottle. To make the donuts, you take a roll of toilet paper and continuously wrap the TP around your hand 30 times. then you fold and roll it in on itself to form the donut shape.
Next, fold up 2 large sheets of news paper into squares, wet them heavily with water, and then put them into the pair of socks to form a "mit" you can wear on your hands. This will prevent you from being burned while you roll the hot plastic in your hands to shape it into the shank.
Once you have your mits ready and the donuts made, you're ready to start making your weapon. You have to place the donut on an uneven surface so the air can flow under neath it to keep it burning. The edge of a toilet works especially well. Also, if its on the edge of the toilet and the cops start to come near your cell you can quickly toss it into the bowl and flush the donut away. I'm using a small Weber BBQ for making this.
The above picture is about half way into melting. The idea is to be wearing the mits so you don't burn yourself and you want to keep rotating the plastic shampoo bottle evenly over the burning donut until it is very pliable and and then roll it in your hands to make a small stick of solid and VERY hard plastic.
You also want to be very careful not to light your hands on fire, which is really easy to do considering your hands are wrapped in socks and right above an open flame. After about 10-15 minutes, you get something that looks like this:
You want to make sure the plastic is rolled a lot. I didn't do it as much as I should have cuz I didn't want to spend the whole hour doing it. You have to heat it a lot and roll it a lot so you don't get any pockets of air or open space inside the stick, or else it will break.
After you have let the plastic stick cool for a few hours and run it under cold water a few times to help it along in cooling off, it's time to sharpen it! yay! In a cell you would use your floor, and sit there and tediously grind it against the floor for hours and hours and hours until you get the point you want. I used sand paper and a file and it still took me about 2 hours to get it down to a point, but it still isnt as "pointy" as I'd like.
After you sharpen it, you take a sheet or sock and rip it into thin strips and use the strips to wrap around the handle of the shank to make a nice hand grip. When its done, its looks very crude, but when made right they are very dangerous and very hard and sharp.
And that's it! Congratulations! You've made your very first prison shank. Hopefully you will never have to make one for real. But just in case you do, remember this lesson!