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And then i butchered him with it. >> you find a piece of metal or something, file it down on the concrete. it ain't got to be sharp, it's just got to have a point. put your handle on it and do what you need to do. >> "lockup" crews are regularly exposed to the tools of a deadly trade. >> every prison we film in, there's always a shank museum, a place where the authorities display all of the weapons that are confiscated by staff. homemade weapons the inmates have made from bed springs or melted down plastic. they're truly ingenious but deadly as well. >> at california's san quentin state prison...

Is that. this weapon, for instance, very crudely made. magazines rolled. this is a spear. and as you can see, it's pretty rigid. this inmate lodged a metal screw for the tip. when the officer or inmate walks by the cell, the spear is thrust out. >> you wouldn't think that a rolled up newspaper or magazine would be -- make that good of a handle and it does. very effective. >> this is known as a zip gun. this portion of the zip gun is filled with match heads, ground-up match heads. a plunger is used to push shrapnel, pieces of metal, ground up zippers, packs it down. when his target walks by, th...

Trace? >> reporter: we did some research and found out you can take a steel pipe and turn it into a zip gun and shotgun in less than 30 seconds. take a look at the end of this demonstration. >> it's standard tubing right off the shelf. it comes the right size for it. that's a .12 gauge. go ahead. >> reporter: so the police in fresno had just been briefed about this kind of stuff. they see this guy walking down the street with a super soaker hang around his neck. they stopped him and sure enough inside there was no water. there was a steel pipe and a .20 gauge shotgun shell. >> he's out here wi...

The ones you don't really see. when a guy carries something like this, he means business. he wants to hide it. very sharp, very pointed. this is what we'd call a .22 zip gun. shoots a .22 round. put your bullet in there. screw it down until it's tight. made in one of the shops. if guy didn't know this, if this wasn't together, he had this piece laying on one bench and this piece laying here, you really wouldn't know what it was. >> the c.e.r.t. team constantly trains to respond to any incident within the prison, including escape attempts. >> what we're doing here today, we're repelling. we're ...

There. they use this strap for getting underneath the bed, because we've found shanks there and had to fish them out. >> success rate, that's hard to say. sometimes it goes in spurts. we might find a lot of shanks one month and the next six months might not find any. >> this is numerous contraband we've found throughout the years here at the penitentiary. this is a zip gun. we have a screw in there. a shank made out of a pen barrel and a nail. these are nonlethal but they put your eye out. this is made out of a plastic comb. >> a turkey leg bone. certain cell houses are not allowed to have chi...