Im building one of those potato launchers and i was wondering about the chance of it backfiring. Im going to be using ABS pipe instead of pvc pipe due to the fact that pvc pipe sells by 10 foot increments at my local store.

Is abs pipe stronger than pvc?

And what hair sprays work the best?

One final question, would it be possible to use an electric start IE. 6 Volt battery with 2 leads close together in the ignition chamber making a spark.

Thanks for your help
- Prodigy45

yeh that should work , but make shure the end dont blow off (that goes for all pipes) then just spray with hair spary make a hole close to the end of the pipe at the back just big enough to fit a BBQ lighter , then jam the patato in so there is no air in the pipe or just pack it in so no air gets in or out then click the BBQ lightr and it will send a spark to the hair spray wich lights it up and copresses the air and makes the pipe shoot out the patito... its fun

also about the ignition thing... i suppoze if u take just a hair of wire stick it threw the pipe with cleanx around it and attach it to the battery , then when u click the igiton/switch it heats up the wire (like a toaster) and burns the cleanex and sets off the hair spray and launches the pataito

[This message has been edited by bigsnoopdeezy (edited 05-24-2001).]

Excellent, thanks...

Btw, know of any really ez-to-make bombs that are just for noise? Like Pop bottle bombs? Not for destruction, just to freak people out. I heard dry ice works well...

dry ice should work but it would take a while for it to evaporate... unless you ass water or some shit of course heh.

sorry, evaporate is the wrong term... i mean expand and blow up the bottle

omg im full of mistakes to day... add water! not ass water lol typo

Yeah I was wondering what the hell you were talking about. "What the hell is ass water?"

about your little spud-launcher...DON'T USE ABS FOR COMBUSTION!!! DON'T DO IT, I HEARD IT IS EXTREMELY BAD! YOU MIGHT GET SHRAPNEL INSIDE YOUR BODY! n-e-ways...if you goto http://www.xinventions.com it has some really nice ideas for suff like that...check out his ingnition..it might be like what you want.

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well thank ghetto, i was gonna watch him use the damn think... now i know to get the fuck outa there if he trys it heh

THING!

I will now share with you a wonderful experience I had with my friend's cannon.

Since supplies are hard to find here this cannon was made from metal pipe. All well and good, you say? Well, I was standing behind this friend of mine while he fired the cannon, which was held over his shoulder like one of those World War II bazookas. Well, the motorcycle battery ignition system worked like a charm- And shot the plug out of the back of the cannon, which struck me squarely in the chest. Which hurt, just a little.

The moral of this story is to watch where you point BOTH ends of one of those things.


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Day must fade to night,
Night must give in to sunrise,
I watch, silently.

~A Haiku, Minami Sasake

I was gonna say for a home made potato canon that ABS would more then likely be stronger since it is thicker. but it is also made from a different material and may break into pieces. so you may one to reconsider the PVC. as far as 10 foot sections goes, How long do you want the barrel.. wtf, are you making a super gun? hehe. anyways dont point it at anyone. go find a grassy field somewhere to set it off. and if the cops catch you it could be considered as a bomb. you could do serious time for possesing such a device.

shut up bitch. potato cannons arent illegal until u hit someone with the projectile.

abs works ok. i think that your not supposed to use abs for PNEUMATIC cannons, but it works ok for combustion. just dont use pvc cement to glue together the abs, u need abs cement.

the 6 volt battery wont have enought voltage to throw a spark. but u can add a transformer to change current into voltage and that will throw the spark. either get a bbq piezoelectric grill ignitor, or a grill ignitor that uses a 9-volt battery with a transformer (my preference).

by backfire do u mean like recoil? the recoil of these things is very small unless u have a very heavy projectile. this one time i left the ramrod in the barrel, in front of the potato spud. when shot, the recoil was so much that cannon slipped out of my hands and flew about 10 feet backwards. i was stunned.

yeah once my endcap flew off, too. the flame came out the back, burning my hand, and singeing some hair off my arm.

also, dry ice doesnt evaporate, it sublimates.

what else was there?

oh yes: pretty ,uch all flammable fairspray works fine, the hard part is figuring out how much to put in the chamber. to little or too much can be a problem. so experiment and find out, since all cannons are different.

ok i think i cleared up everything here. any other questions?

Well, it's complete, almost. I have all the parts and i bought some abs glue (which smelled like crazy and made me dizzy, after that i put on a gas mask). I sat out on my deck with the cement (sick yellow color) and glued the blast chamber together. All i need to do is add the final piece, the firing barrel. Right now it looks like some bitchass nuclear weapon container and im thinkin of spraypaintin it silver and slappin a hazardous waste sticker on it. Anyway, back to the point. Should i cement the barrel onto the gun, or leave it so that i might change it later. Right now it's a 2 foot long 2" abs pipe. My friend suggests i use 1 1/2" or 1" tubing, but i think i'll ask the "experts". My friend also says that i should use WD40 or Carberetta Fluid instead of hairspray. Any ideas/comments on that?

Thanks for the help again, Prodigy45

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I love the smell of anthrax in the morning.

I got a steel cannon 9ft long with a 6 inch diameter, It can lob a steamed pudding tin 500 yards using baloons of oxy acetaline. Good design if anyone's interested.

PICTURE! PICTURE!

lol would do but my digi camera's broken. It basically looks like a long rusty tube with a touch hole. I think it was a gatepost for a deer fence I spent a few hours knocking it out of a concrete block. I set it off with a fuse and melted weedkiller sugar igniter. It Makes a Bloody huge bang so I really wouldnt reccomend Oxy acetaline for a Pvc pipe. Specially not since I blew an aluminium bin into 3 bits using a fairly small carried bag of the stuff. 2:3 acetaline xygen by volume is the most explosive mixture.

i use pvc and recomend it. if your abs is pressure rated then it should be fine. i just use aqua-net as fuel and a lantern lighter as the sparker. Make new cannons after a while to be safe. My favorite cannon is my toilet paper launcher. The barrell and combustion chamber screw apart the whole thing fits in a back pack.

I like lantern lighters becauses they dont seem to fuck up as much as grill sparkers. And aqua-net can launch an apple 100+ yards easy but wont eat the pvc like some other chemicals can. And it's cheap as dirt.

if your barrel has a 1.5in inside diameter use milk caps to make a water tight seal they make great super soakers.

yes, thats true, but beware of the recoil!

dear god this topic was for my first launcher, im on # 3 right now.. let it die =P

*takes potato lancher #1 and kills topic with it*

for gawds sake thank you unstable247

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ok...if you say so
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for informational purposes only
http://spudszilla.cjb.net