Chuck sent in his great how to on making a copper pipe potato gun – “Dave and I have an affinity for copper. We’re, I guess, slightly obsessed with the stuff. It’s shiny, soft but strong, and easy to work with. So we build stuff out of it more and more frequently. Some bloggable, some not. One of our recent bloggable uses for copper pipe is our copper potato gun.” Link.
Related: The Night Lighter by William Gurstelle. Launch potato projectiles 200+ yards with this stun-gun triggered, high-powered potato cannon with see-thru action. Info & article on page 108.
12 thoughts on “HOW TO – Make a copper pipe potato gun”
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apart from the varying legality of potato (or potatoe for the ex-vice-presidents among us) guns, this design seems to be missing a pressure gauge, or at the very least a relief valve.
And I’d go for a larger valve, and taper down to a smaller barrel, lower psi in a larger reservior.
And polish the bajezus out of the whole thing, inside and out.
In response to the above:
The bike pump we used to pump this up has a pressure guage on it.
The pictures of our 2″ diameter, almost 4′ long tank will be posted on my blog as soon as I get aroud to it.
And it wasn’t polished because we were a tad pressed for time and wanted to launch some produce. ;-)
I mean, in response to the below…
Ever tried a carrot?
Careful selection grants an almost crossbow bolt-like action.
But on a more make-ful lean, a smaller version of this, plus LED throwies, correctly packaged…
I think of a few tall buildings that might have odd colored lights on them soon.
I’ve had plans for trying a variety of flora this weekend. When we finished building it, all we had was potatos and apples. Apples flew quite nicely, by the way, and exploded on impact better than potato plugs.
If you do the LED throwy one, let me know. I’d like to see that. An idea springs to mind of a small one hidden in a sleeve, fed by a hose from a tank in a backpack…
Recently I got personal stun gun. Took it apart and put the guts in a typical radio shack project box. Coming off the 2 electrodes is thick sheathed wire from CRT flyback circuits. Well… It gives a very hot spark :) even several times per second! Here where I got this one from: http://www.ultimatespudgun.com