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Needs a plenum so you can make it multi shot without having to fill the tank after every shot. Or some weirdo neighborhood kid that doesnt mind pumping it up after every shot. Mount a go pro on the rail to make videos to entertain the double gun bbs.
http://tuhsphysics.ttsd.k12.or.us/Research/IB07/GramRecoSire/index.htm


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Must be a regional thing, but, our combustion power launchers were always fueled with automotive starting fluid, not hairspray. I cant remember the last time I saw a can of hairspray, but, there is starting fluid in the shop.

Ether is handy for getting tires mounted on rims, too.

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Stan, I haven't seen a potato gun in use for probably 20 years or so, but a friend made one with a barrel of 2" PVC pipe around 42" to 48" inches long, The combustion chamber was made from a 4" tee with a reducer, and it used an igniter from an old gas grill. I never measured the range, but I'd guess it was launching a good sized potato at least 250 yards or better. And when he managed to hit the side of a barn about 200 yards away, it splattered the spuds and made a very loud thump. I'm surprised they didn't break the old chestnut siding boards. It was impressive enough that I was a bit concerned about the chamber pressure that was involved. A potato weighs a lot more than a tennis ball, and I wondered what the burst pressure of those schedule 40 fittings would be.

We also learned that you could dump a little calcium carbide and water into an empty metal 5 gallon tar or paint bucket, and crimp the lid closed. The fuse was a paper soda straw crimped closed. When the acetylene that formed detonated, it would open the bucket at the seam and launch the lid almost out of sight, and the sound was deafening.

The beer can guns were simply noise-makers, and with the cans opened at both ends and taped together to form the barrel, they came apart at the seams pretty quickly if you tried firing even lighter projectiles. The pumpkin chuckers SKB mentions above are very impressive to see too.

To answer RWTF's earlier question about sizing a potato or apple to the bore... The muzzle of the PVC barrel is sharply tapered so that it cuts the projectile of choice down to a perfect bore size fit as it is rammed down the barrel. No wadding is necessary. Sometimes I really wonder how we lived past adolescence.


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Quote:
So, from someone who's never even seen a potato gun, what's the range of those things, fueled by hairspray or compressed air?


Was not my gun, but one of our more creative members put together a length of ABS pipe with a combustion chamber and igniter. Overall length was about 3-4 feet and it was surprisingly accurate after the first ranging shot. Since we were launching from a hill, it seemed to carry 300-400 yards on a good day, using premium hairspray.

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A cousin's son had a PVC pipe potato launcher, that if memory serves, was fueled by starting fluid with a barbeque igniter. The one and only time I saw it was when I was at my cousins cabin and we were shooting the potatoes across the river that flowed past the cabin. We could easily hit the opposite shore, at least 150 yds away.

It happened to be during the heat of summer and there were a bunch of weekend warrior tubers floating the river. I think when they approached the cabin and saw us firing the potato gun, they got a bit nervous, at least from the looks we were getting from some of them.....no tubers float device were sunk!

Probably all of the tubers were not locals. The locals use the river for fishing, fly or otherwise and they (the tubers) probably thought we were some N ID rednecks out to terrorize them!

That's a darn cool set-up you put together Chuck!


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This thread makes me miss Miller. He'd be providing us a calculation for the ballistic coefficient of a potato.


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Originally Posted By: keith
Sometimes I really wonder how we lived past adolescence.


Did you ever make acetylene bombs? Get the cutting torch perfectly dialed in, snuff the flame out on the bench, and fill balloons with the gas. We usually put the ballon in a paper bag, and lit the bag on fire after dark. Spectacular homemade firework.

One kids Dad was a pipe insulator, and always had some sort of industrial contact cement you couldnt buy at a store on hand. We would paint the inside of a cardboard box with the stuff, quickly tape the box shut, and launch it into a bonfire at night.

Everything I like is illegal.

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Ted, at one job years ago, my co-worker filled a heavy black 55 gallon trash liner with acetylene, and a splash of oxygen for good measure. The igniter was a flashlight bulb that had the glass broken with pliers. He soldered about 100 feet of two conductor wire to the bulb, and taped that inside the filled bag. He set it outside the plant, and used a 6 volt lantern battery to light the exposed filament from inside the building. You would have thought a gasoline tanker had exploded from the sound of it, and it shook dust off of the trusses.

I saw the aftermath of a slightly smaller version of acetylene in a trash liner. It ripped a steel commercial man-door off the hinges and bent it badly. That was a practical joke that went a bit overboard, and the millwright who did it told me he thought he was permanently deafened afterward. It would be a great noisemaker for the Fourth of July, but with a plastic bag containing something that explosive, I kinda worry about static electricity setting it off while taping it closed. At very least, I'd expect ruptured eardrums from the concussion.


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Probably the governor on our projects was the fact that welding gasses have always been expensive, and we were too young to buy them.

Pinch a couple balloons worth off the old mans torch tanks ? That would work, but, filling a 55 gallon bag with the stuff would have gotten us busted.

Or, killed. The percussion from a good sized balloon going off is fearsome. 55 gallons? BATF would be there.

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Chuck H Offline OP
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In a past life, we would fill trash bags with a mix of oxy-acetylene and shoot them. Just about anything larger than a 22 would set them off, they were so unstable. One night a friend was filling one by hand and we surmised his poly shirt generated a static spark to the bag and boom. It blew off his shirt, burned all the hair off his chest, eyebrows and arms and knocked him on his arse. He was pretty much unharmed except for his hearing.

Another venture with the same crowd and same era, we inflated a weather baloon (remotely) with couple hundred yds of hose, and detonated it on a dry lake with a surplus piezoelectric bomb trigger and a broken flash bulb. That one rocked to desert floor and had a visible shockwave.

Then there was the 3000 psi water rocket...

Definitely an era of stupid antics

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