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Potato Bazookas
Zog The Undeniable writes "The latest craze in Germany is "Kartoffelkanone" or potato bazookas. These use hairspray ignited by a spark to fire potatoes at colossal speeds. The authorities are not amused." Everyone needs a hobby I guess.
Bet you can't shoot just one!
g
We made one in our Physics class in high school. I'm due to go to my 10 year high school reunion in a little more than a year.
The germans JUST NOW discovered potato guns? Damn, get with the program people!
Just wait until they figure that if you fill a tin can with cement you can put a hole through a car, not just a big dent in the side.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Being close to Cleveland, I have to wonder if you can modify this for beer bottles.
throw the baby out. The bathwater is cold
ther German should immediately pass a homeland security act to combat these behaviour of terrorism.
geek page at KY speaks
I got one of these I made a few years ago. Talk about having some fun times with the friends. I got to the point of having interchangable barrels. Ahhh the memmories that this topic brings back.
I made one of these 10 years ago. :-)
They are a lot of fun, but I live in more of a city now.. can't fire it anymore.
That doesn't make them any less fun, though. For Xmas I got Backyard Ballistics which documents how to create a potato gun as well as many other loud and violent ballistic weaponry for children of all ages. Highly recommended.
The Germans are finally discovering how fun it is to launch things? Re-discovering?
Potato's as weapons. You could supply an army and feed them at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone.
About 20 years ago, as a kid in Denver, we used to shoot tennis balls out of guns made from soda cans and fuled with ligher fluid. At least we did until I had the great idea to soak the ball with lighter fluid before we fired it. The first few times were great, but soon one of our flaming balls set the neighbor's yard on fire.
"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
I'm sort of surprised to see this posted here, as potato cannon are made by almost every young boy when growing up. Especially engineery types who end up reading Slashdot, I'd think.
Funny also to see the authorities upset about it. In the US, our relative comfort with weapons of all sorts probably allows us to more easily accept that "boys will be boys."
While the danger of such a device is frightening, I cannot but believe that in the right hands, a potato cannon could be used as a weapon for good.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
A guy who worked at home depot actually helped my friends create a potato gun.. Needless to say the advice he gave was great.
Baked ones make a good sqash when they hit something...
But the raw ones hit like a brick....
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
I've seen these on and off for two decades.... Aqua Net is a really good/cheap fuel for them.
For anyone interested in doing this too, building instructions can be found here
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
In Eastern Germany.... :-)
I had one in high school. WE used to steal the electronic ignighters off of our neighbor's bar-b-que grills to create the spark. After testing every product, we found that starting fluid (basically ether) gave the best launches. The next best is that aqua net hair spray crap that everyone's grandma uses to make their helmet hair. Once, we even made a double-barreled one, which actually worked pretty well (seperate chambers and ignighters). I wish i still had pictures!
today is spelling optional day.
Not like no one else has done this on the net. Here are detailed instructions (at least enough to build) if you are so inclined... http://blizzard.rwic.und.edu/~nordlie/cannon/
Old, but very sweet!
GotSpud?
Tony's page
Spudweizer
Simple Spudgun
My mom would never let me build one when I lived at home, so now's my chance. AND, I'll be prosecuted as an adult, and possibly an 'American Terrorist'
remember the pumpkin cannon guy from october?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
reminds me of when I was a kid (25+ years ago) we use to take a couple of tennis ball cans cut out one of the bottoms, tape them together and using lighter fluid create a little tennis ball cannon....
Oh my I can see exactly how this happened.
Billy-Bob from Southern Louisianna (sp?) finally gets into the foriegn exchange student program to go study in Germany. Dieter from Germany does the same to come to Souther Louissianna.
Billy-bob gets bored one day with builds potato cannon and shows it to all his german friend. Crazy fad begins.
Dieter learns of said cannons in the US and brings idea back to find the fad already there. He then proceeds to spread the art of potato cannon building.
the FORTH REICH ENSUES!!!!! except now the BLITZKRIEG isn't their Major offensive weapon its the POTATO CANNON!!!!
Who makes you Sig?
the story calling it "craze" is somewhat overrated. At every time in the last 50 years, kids have built something that goes boom. I think that is the same in every other country.
I live here and i haven't seen or heard of a single "Kartoffelkanone" prior to the article and the photos of the SPIEGEL magazine.
At least it's an interesting method of delivering mashed potatoes.
Yours, Martin
So it is not just fashion that Europe is 30 years behind the US...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
The easiest way to build one is to use PVC piping (two diameters, one for the chamber one for the nuzzle), the igniter off a gas grill, and some supper glue and silicone caulk. Depending on the diameter of pipe you use and the propellant, which can be almost anything from butane to hairspray to your own special mixture, you could get a potato to go a good quarter mile or more. Use to be a hobby back in the day.
"Make me some if you're making some"
Veryold news in the states. Dave Barry did an article on these a few years ago. He notes you can launch many things with them (including a Barbie doll). Not that he advocates that or anything.
That being said - this article seems pretty irrelevant to slashdot. Not only is the potato cannon old news, I'm sure assorted techies have come up with far more interesting stuff than that.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Let's visit them all!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
It just so happens I had this same hobby a few years back. Except we used propane as the fuel and golf balls as the projectiles. Tiger Woods beware! It was truly amazing to see a golf ball launched several hundred yards, almost out of sight. For those interested, www.spudtech.com has a load of information on these fun toys.
Scott
I think mine is still at my parents house somewhere. Man that thing was fun!
KABOOM!!!!
...or someone else's.
My friends and I built a potato canon and regularly fired it over the skies over Tucson. It was fun to a potato hang in the air for up to 10 seconds at a time, and a bit of basic math estimated it to travel over 1/3 a mile. Beware though that the potato emerges at about 100 miles per hour (but slows down alomost immediately due to air resistance).
We stopped fiting it after we stuck a 1/4 inch thick board of plywood about 3 feet in front of the canon and fired away.
Damned if that potato didn't punch a perfect 4 inch hole through that board. As the potato emerged on the far side though, it almost completely stripped off the last ply layer from the board.
We gained a new respect for tuber-based weaponry that day....
Dr Fish
Reminds me of the time a couple of Iowa State students got out of trouble for having a spud gun by claiming it was an internal combustion engine. When the officer asked where the piston was, they replied "About 5 blocks that a way.."
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
My favorite part of the article:
German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.
I can just picture these "experts" in a lab doing "testing".
It probably went something like "Whoa, that was way cool, lets see what else we can use. Hey, if we use something really heavy it'll be just like those cannons on junkyard wars!"
Those guys must have a cool job.
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
Probably not a coincidence that he was German, either. BTW, the above "directions" probably don't work. Really.
They say we're violent and warmongering but christ the woods here in the US don't "echo with the thump-thump of potato guns". Not they're a bunch of f***ing retards. Drainage pipes and masking tape? Are you f***ing kidding me? I was pretty nuts when I was younger but I used 330 lb test pvc and the 3 step glue made for it. Not to mention I had an old jeans pants leg over the combustion chamber just in case.
Cool. I want one of those Katyushka multi-potato launchers! Hee hee hee hee hee!
Ahem. Bloody dangerous. Ought to be banned.
Anon karma yada yada
Safety chiefs target German craze for 'bazooka' spud guns
From Allan Hall in Berlin
GERMAN youths have taken up a dangerous new pastime: firing potatoes as fast as a rocket from "bazookas" made from drainage pipes.
One man almost lost an eye, a woman had her leg broken and one teenager was badly burnt when the hairspray used as the propellant exploded in his face as he prepared to fire.
A 16-year-old in the university city of Göttingen lost part of his ear when the firing chamber ripped open as he pulled the trigger.
The so-called Kartoffelkanone are made from piping and masking tape bought at any hardware store. With a range of 200 metres they could split a man's head at 15 metres and penetrate a wooden wall at 90 metres.
The guns are not governed by the usual strict firearms regulations in Germany, but prosecutors in the republic's 16 states are passing emergency rulings to try to outlaw them.
Horst Przbyla, a munitions expert for police in Brandenburg near Berlin, said: "What started out as an extreme form of paintball has become deadly dangerous. Certainly, anyone caught in the path of the projectiles can expect to sustain very serious injuries indeed. It can only be a matter of time until the first death."
Police are considering asking leading hardware chains to sell piping only to adults.
Local stores that sell hairsprays and pressurised lighter fluid, the favourite propellants for the DIY weapons, may also be asked to sell them only to adults. Failing that, police suggest that youngsters should have to explain why they are buying them.
A website used by the Kartoffelkanone enthusiasts was receiving only 20 hits a day just three months ago: now there are more than 700.
German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.
An apple fired from one of the guns almost took out the eye of a middle-aged man near the Baltic coast.
In Bavaria a 55-year-old woman suffered severe injuries when a potato smashed into her thigh as she walked near woodland with her dog. A school in Weinstadt in Baden-Württemberg recently came under a potato barrage from children playing truant, while in the Taunus region several windows of a block of flats were smashed.
The hairspray is ignited using a battery which provides a spark. Some youths have made multi-barrelled potato cannons, resembling the Soviet Katyusha rocket launchers of the Second World War and capable of firing at a phenomenal rate.
Thuringia in the east has imposed a ban on the guns and four youngsters in the town of Schlotheim caught by police had their weapons destroyed and were sentenced to 25 hours community service. Police also caught two teenagers with a cannon nearly 6ft long in one Rhineland town. A spokesman for the police in Brandenburg said: "Woodland on Sundays echoes to the thump-thump of these guns. It is a growing social problem that needs to be tackled."
At least when I made mine, I didn't shoot it in crowded areas. Why are so many innocent bystanders being injured in Germany?
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
"The latest craze in France is "sac de fèces" or bags of feces. These use paper bags filled with feces and then are ignited upon the doorsteps of the unsuspecting. The authorities are not amused." Everyone needs a hobby I guess.
A lot of people are saying "I made these years ago with pvc, blah blah, not new."
Well, this much like saying the concept of firing lead out of a barrel is not new, and ignoring the fact that the technology behind it hasn't changed much either.
I don't know about you, but the potato guns I build were not industrial steel tubing with rifeling controled by butane-ethenol mixes. Nor could it punch through a wheelbarrel and the side of a house consecutively, like some I've seen today...
Counrtries with low military budgets (Ireland anyone?) should really consider these for artillary.
NMG
Longer range, and great bounces.
Best Slashdot Co
I love that... "hey kids, those potato gun things are WAY too dangerous for you! Don't try it, but THESE things are WAY more destructive!"
Ya gotta wonder.
$0.02 (CDN)
Hairspray is for wimps...real men use compressed air. Compressed air is much more powerful, you don't have the legal ramifications of using an explosive, and it's cheaper than hairspray. It takes a little more work to get it air-tight, and you have to buy a thicker PVC pipe, but the results are worth the extra effort.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
I remember when I was 10 or 12 we use to shoot tomatoes out of mufflers. It was great to watch them shoot out and splatter on another car. Today, if someone did that to my car I would kill them.
I never liked you
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
Courtesy of Google , the blueprints and forums here and here
(all the above in german, obviously).
I am currently growing a potato in my basement, and am documenting it online at
:)
http://www.projectpotato.com
when I was a kid. We took a used model rocket motor and duct-taped it to the top of a wooden gun, with the nozzle to the rear. We'd put a firecracker in the motor casing, with the fuse sticking back through the nozzle. We were fortunate enough to have an olive tree in our yard...fresh olives are about as hard as avacados. We put an olive down the tube, in front of the firecracker, and light the fuse. It could cause welts at 15 yards. Later improvements included a mounted lighter for ignition. Not one eye was put out that summer.
Evil is the money of root.
Perhaps there are other things from Backyard Ballistics by William Gurstelle that are re-experiencing a renaissance.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Check out this story we ran over on Sci-Fi Today which included some relevant links. You can get Sci-Fi Today daily headlines on your Slashdot home page by clicking here and putting a checkmark in the Sci-Fi Today box. Or heck, just join us as a member and help us build a science-oriented discussion community!
We used to build these. Then we got _REAL_ cannons.. (black powder, medieval carriages, neat things to play with.. 16 oz of cannon powder will fire an empty 1 lb propane can quite a distance..).
Wait till the Germans discover this throwing larger fruit for fun and profit"
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
The most "impressive" one was a 6ft long black barreled cannon known as "black beauty". It had an ignition switch from a grill, eliminating more clumsy homemade solutions for ignition and could put a potato through a wooden fence from about 20 yards. It could fire them @150 yards on a good day. It was tremendously dangerous, with a 3 foot flame shooting out of the barrel each time you fired it. The heat and pressure on the piping caused it to crack and need replacement, a function often ignored by my more idiotic friends. Here in texas some younger kids at my church got caught firing one in a golf course not too long ago and recieved some fines from the local police. These things are not safe...
My last memory of that cannon involved modification to shoot sprays of water. Ignition, upon filling the barrel with water after placing a "separator" in the piping caused a huge spray of water and steam to eject in every direction. Took the bark right off of trees...
STUPID
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Obviously not the kind of people who shop at Home Despot
that's right, despot, not depot
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I went back to my parents house to build one (and test fire, since the apartment complex I was living in presented an environment a little too target-rich). After the PVC cement dried and I completed some test firing with a rag stuffed into the barrel, I managed to put a potato into the air, across the street, over the house across the street and smack into a humongous water tower that has loomed over my childhood memories for 20 years.
Talk about a thrill. It was early evening, and a little dark, so you could see the long tongue of orange flaming Aqua-net.
First a click (of the grill igniter in the trigger)...then a sort of "thomp" sound...then a long silence...then a huge, resounding GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG sound.
It was awesome. A childhood dream come true.
I need to build another.
Didn't the Israelis do that already with Saddam's gigantic spud cannon that he had built? I wonder how far his could have launched a potato. That would be a project!
In my frat we had the dannon cannon. You would be amazed to see how far one can launch a grapefruit from the top of a building in Philadelphia.
Fluff
President Bush needs to immediately respond to this unprecedented threat to our national security.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
So, if you put a bunch of these tubes together in a sphere with the barrels all pointed inwards and use Estes rocket motor ignitors so they all go off at the same time can you cause the oranges to fuse?
OJ, with lots of pulp!
Tisha Hayes
We have done this for physics often... no explosives or flammables involved. (I know... where's the fun then :} )
:}
:}
All you need is a length of pipe that just barely fits a pingpong (table tennis whatever) ball through it. Fit a connector into one end of it that can hook to a vacuum pump.
Ok.. now here is the operation.
*WARNING do not have anything in line with EITHER end of this device!!! It is VERY unlikely but either end can give way and it fire either direction!*
Place the pingpong ball in the pipe. Place a single piece of plastic packing tape over each end. (Clear or brown... not filament!)
Use your pump and lower the pressure as far as you can. (You will have to expirement to make sure you can get it that low without imploding the tape on the ends)
When ready to fire.. put end with fitting slightly lower. Wait for pingpong ball to settle at that end of the tube. Aim. Using something sharp or pointed pierce the tape on that end of the pipe.
Bye-bye pingpong ball
Basically the inrush of air propels the ball through the tube and straight through the tape on the other end. We have clocked these pingpong balls in excess of 150mph
Please only do this under carefully controlled circumstances... It makes a great science expirement and is relatively safe. But as always be careful, wear protection and DON'T BE STUPID.
BTW You can pick up used vacuum pumps for cheap on Ebay... cheaper than 20 or 30 cans of hairspray so...
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
When I was a kid we'd have potato wars with these.
Also, Moms would get upset when she'd go to make dinner and find out she didn't have any potatos left.
Probably wouldn't make dents in most things, but my thoughts always work more toward the notion of a high angle shot (a "spam mortar" perhaps). Imagine standing in line to see "The Return of the King" and suddenly being bombarded with spam. Or maybe being that email spam king and having your back yard picnic, well, spammed.
Of course, combined with a potato bazooka, we'd have Hash Artillery (and not the kind you'd smoke or bake into brownies). Toss in a cabbage trebuchet and a flambe' (why didn't the ampersand-eacute-semicolon character entity work there?) thrower and you'd have mealtime covered.
What's wrong with homemade artillery?
(Yes, I am being sarcastic.)
Weapons of Mass Destruction, I say!
Bomb the bastards before its to late.
In a crazy incident, American soldiers came under heavy potato fire while during a training mission in the Middle East. The American soldiers managed to escape unharmed, except for one who was turned into a human mashed potato. The attackers were captured and taken to Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, where they are being held indefinitely and treated poorly. After ten hours of being asked where the odd weapons came from, one Arab replied, "We got the guns from Germany, but Habeeb the potato farmer in Idaho supplied the ammunition!"
And also in related news, Iraq has begun importing more and more potatos, under the cover of "food for humanitarian aid."
Great... just what we need. Instead of firing SCUDS, Iraq will just fire SPUDS at us. :)
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
We built one using carberator starter fluid, and a pushbutton propane grill starter/sparker.
Launches potatoes into the ocean.
www.kartoffelkanone-forum.de
have they used them to invade Poland yet?
wait till they find out you can dump 2 tubes of BB's on top of the potato... I used to shoot crows with mine... where are the potatoe-huggers at?
wait till the figure out how to build a frozen watermellon mortor. then we'll be in trouble....
Silence Bossy Meat Creatures!
bius sig file. This is a moebius sig file. This is a moe
I have been building potato guns for about 7 years now. I find it hard to believe its just now coming into its own as a fad.
When I first started building it was a bit tricky but I found that the perfect combustion chamber to barrel ratio was about 2:1. Now the brilliant thing about that was that it could be halved, or doubled, depending on what you were doing. By having a barrel that was 1 inch, you can fire marshmallows out the gun at your friends leaving nice welts.
Also, to step up the power just a little bit use carburetor cleaner as opposed to hairspray... its a bit louder too.
Do not use ABS plastic though (its the black piping), it doesn't have the necessary strength in PSI to support the combustion. You don't want to have an automatic shrapnel device instead of a potato gun. Only use PVC, its much safer.
Have fun and be careful.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
I was happily launching spuds until I had a vision of the ABS plastic (schedule 80!) combustion chamber exploding. So I gave it to my brother.
Soup cans and duct tape get you a sweet tb cannon we my neighbor had two black labs who used to go nuts chasseing the bouncing ball when we would fire em. Be sure to burn the fuzz off the ball fist they shoot better.
Here's a letter from the ATF regarding the legality of the "spud gun". Note the date - September 12, 1995.
Definitely old news...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
looks like a lot more fun
or this
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
I built one years ago, and I must say that they're a blast. Make the barrel from 1-1/4" Schedule 40, as it's easier to find potatoes that'll fit snug. If you build a breech-loader with a threaded cleanout plug, make sure to keep the threads clean. Burnt hairspray and potato juice gets amazingly sticky.
...
I took the Mark-1 Potato Gun up to a local SCCA event for the weekend. Saturday evening we found an open spot and used a large billboard for target practice. The men all pounced on the opportunity to fire the thing, but the ladies were a bit hesitant. Given a little coaxing, they came around nicely (guys - this is your chance to put your arm around her and "help". Don't pass on the opportunity.) In the end, the ladies were more enthusiastic than the guys. That was okay by me.
Incidentally, go read the ingredients on a can of hairspray. SD Alcohol 40, Propane, Isobutane, and other combustibles usually top the list. Makes nice propellant. At sunset, you'll get a really nice light-blue alcohol muzzle flash coming out the end.
Ensuring peace through superior firepower
"We will not tolerate this kind of terrorism! While we continue to hunt down the perpetrators, we are looking into a variety of defense options including but not limted to:
The Spud Missle Defense System.
The Total Tuber Alert Network.
The PATRIOT Act 2 or Potato Anti Threat Response Initiative On Terrorism.
Collectively these efforts will be part of Operation Potato Sack.
If you suspect terrorist activity, which could range from unusually large potato purchases to bioweapon threats like Suspicious Potato Salad, please alert the authorities immediately.
In light of this new information we are raising the National Alert Level to Golden Brown "
Operator, give me the number for 911!
These kids need some violent video games to relieve their destructive tendencies and to keep them away from these "outdoors."
With a little ingenuity, you can make a weapon out of anything...
"What's in that?"
"Just a few household chemicals mixed in the proper proportions..."
(from Tremors [sorry if quote slightly off...])
dochood
We used to use PAM (canola oil) in a tube ith a barbeque igniter.
Worked like a charm.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
pssh, that is so mid 1990's. I remember in like 1995 two of myh neighbors built their own out of pvc tube. They could shoot a spud three blocks over, it rocked!
And why is it they're not talking about stopping the supply of ammo? Surely no young person would have any legitimate (ie non-projectile) use for a potato, so they should clearly limit the sale of these at such covert arms markets as "grocery stores". They should be burning the fields of the potato growers to stop this tuberic menace to society!
I made one of these with my sister in Georgia a few years ago, we called it the spudzooka. They will need luck getting the stores not to sell the pipes - we did not know really what kind of stuff to get, but after we told the shop assistants what we were making they pointed us in the right direction and gave us tips! Knowing the kind of people that generally work in hardware stores, I bet this will be happening in Germany too. I was never brave enough to make one back in the UK, god knows what the police would say, but I don't want to find out.
they already have...
?Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now controls the past.?
I suppose while the potato is IN the gun you could make one of those Potato and Lemon Juice lights to use for nightvision.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
These have been around for years. There are plenty of dedicated sites. Even different models. One site shows pictures of a hand-held aluminum model that uses a laser site! Just look up potato gun in google and you'll get a plethora of sites.
Here are the first two for those of you who are lazy.
spudtech
spudlauncher
Now if only RMS had seen us launching little penguins... he would have made us call it a GNU/Gun.
Lasers Controlled Games!
... That Iraq has been openly farming potato crops.
...and they are taking this in front of the UN Security Council as we speak.
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
It sounds like these have gone from "geek hobby" to "mainstream danger"
Good thing most of these kids are probably too stupid to make a pneumatic spudgun. Far safer for the operator, but FAR more dangerous for people at the wrong end of the cannon. (Pneumatic spudguns use a constant pressure for most of the firing cycle, rather than the quick spike of pressure from combustion. As a result, pneumatics can pack a LOT more power into a gun while stressing the components less.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I built one of these things in 1988 when I was in high school. You can find plans on the internet for a air operated one that will fire the spud at supersonic speeds. I don't remember the site but it had a frame by frame time laspse of a watermelon getting hit. You have to see it to believe it the watermelon turned in to a mist.
In case one might think such a thing, I am not related in any way to this site and I also do not share the sense of humour or ideas on it.
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
Whoohooo! My work has come to fruitition. Back when I was still in high school (about 5 years ago now) my brother and I showed this german exchange student how to make potato guns since we had been making them for years and years.
Since he couldn't get the proper parts in germany at the time, we shipped him supplies to make one. When he was done he brought it to his school (in germany) for a demonstration. They were even allowed to shoot it out the classroom window.
So I guess his classmates spread the word!!
We used to do this all the time in college. In fact, I remember reading it in the infamous "Arnarchist's Handbook" in the late 80's. Anyone else remember this?
"Police are considering asking leading hardware chains to sell piping only to adults.
Local stores that sell hairsprays and pressurised lighter fluid, the favourite propellants for the DIY weapons, may also be asked to sell them only to adults. Failing that, police suggest that youngsters should have to explain why they are buying them."
Give me a break. Before you know it they will be asking why you are combing your hair and brushing your teeth. Yes that's right... toothpaste and hairspray may be denied to these youngsters. Hopefully they can still buy soap without a note from their parents
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I bet the bloods and the crips will find this solution cost effective in doing their drive bys...this might actually simulate the economy
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
Hello. The article does not mention how to make such a thing. Moreover, people in the site think that everybody knows how these are made.
Please, tell me what to do.
We made a high-speed CD thrower when we were in school for one project. It was pretty dangerous to anything in it's way, not surpisingly. But hey, we got to fire AOL CD's at blocks of wood! Finally, a truly productive use for junk CD's!
Watch out you crazy Brits... It's gonna be raining pomfrets in London before you know it.
Next it'll be the P-3 autonomous flying katoffel humming it's way at Big Ben....
- soupmaster
...will shortly be for sale on Thinkgeek.com for those office skirmishes where Nerf just doesn't cut it. (Like when the marketing guys tell you they want to start shipping that unfinished software product NEXT WEEK). ;-)
-psy
Nay, it is the fact that they are German boys that makes this a newsworthy story.
In the late 80s, Ronald Reagan issued a challenge to then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. During his famous speech in Berlin, he said:
Shortly therafter, the Berlin wall was no more, paving the way for German unification.
People with no sense of history thought this to be a good thing, but myself, I saw these occurrances for their true nature. A unified Germany can mean only one thing... It's only a matter of time before massive, well equipped, well trained German armies are marching all over Europe.
Others deny this conclusion, and some have actually made statements to the effect of:
Be wary, my Slashdotting friends. It's only a matter of time before the people of Germany grow restless, pretending to be friends with the rest of their European neighbors. Already, German youth have turned their attentions to the design and manufacure of inexpensive, abundant, starch weapons.
Heed my warning... It's only a matter of time...
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
pneumatic cannons sweet jebus this thing has a ten foot barrel on it big gun!!
About two years ago, BBC's Jeremy Clarkson had a talk show with a segment on 'cooking'. It included nuking stuff in the microwave (CD's, etc.), making pickles glow, and one or two potato guns. Great fun.
First it was Pringles cans for war-driving, now this. Obviously the potatoes are terrorist tools, and must be banned!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This is an old contraption. They've been doing this for years, as long as they've had PVC pipes as far as I know, maybe earlier. We use modified versions of these using compressed air and garden hose solenoids for confetti cannons and T-Shirt shooters, now if I could find Maude Flanders to hit with a T-Shirt, the rest would be history...
My favorite line from the article:
One man almost lost an eye
Bazookas don't kill people. Potatoes kill people.
--
Steven "Spud" Idaho
V.P. Press Relations
National Bazooka Association
My older brother and his friends exchanged tennis ball artillery shots in the street out front. Thoomp -- thoomp! He's 39 now, but he got into these potato guns a couple of years ago too. His aren't bazookas, they're more like mortars made from pvc piping.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
only outlaws will have potatoes
When I was at Penn State, I remember reading a newspaper story about the prestigous Atherton Hotel. Apparently it had been under mortar fire from a potato gun for several weeks straight! I wish I had known who did it. I think the idea of urban potato warfare in State College would have been a blast =)
We made spud guns a few years back that run on compressed air. You get a section of 4" PVC pipe and cap one end. Drill a hole in the cap and install a tire valve in that hole. That's where you charge it with an air compressor. The length of the 4" PVC pipe determines the amount of 'charge'.
The other end of the 4" pipe is capped with a 4" to 2" (or 1.5") reducer and that is attached to an underground lawn sprinkler valve. The other side of the valve is attached to a chuck of 1.5" or 2" pipe, depending on how big of spud you want to shoot.
Although it doesn't really matter what shape you build it in, we found the most effecient way was to stand the 4" tube and the barrel tube on the ground, tape them together, and then attache the reducers, elbows and the sprinkler valve at the end that had been on the ground. You could theoretically build it all in a straight line, but with a decent sized thank and a barrel of any significant length, it would be very awkward.
Hook up a couple of 9V batteries to a momentary contact switch and attach to the sprinkler valve.
Voila, a compressed air spud gun.
Why compressed air you ask? Simple. In a hairspray spud gun, you have to spray just the right amount of hairpspray, quickly close the breech, point the gun and fire. If you don't get the right amount of hairspray or time it just right you get a misfire, or worse yet, no fire. Compressed air spud guns can be loaded and fired several minutes, possibly hours, later with no problems.
We used a high quality PVC piping that was rated at something like 300 psi and we never used more than 60 psi of pressure to charge it for safety and that seemed to be just as powerful as a normal hairspray spud shooter.
Just for fun, we put an end cap on the barrel and drilled a 3/8" hole in it. Then filled the barrel with water, charged it with air, and voila, the 'super soaker from hell' was born.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
We were doing this in 1987... and it wasnt new then either...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Far less sophisticated, but we got >>200M out of them!
:-)
We used scaffolding poles - 6ft hardened metal tubes. We'd hammer one end flat (difficult!) to crimp it - finished.
Then we'd balance it on a log, throw in a banger (British name for a small one shot fire cracker - illegal now) down the tube and throw apples, rocks, gravel, lunch, anything down afterwards.
To this day I can still remember sending salvoes of unripe fruit hurtling into the stratosphere.
Disgraceful
Hairspray is for wimps ... we used starter fluid in ours. Hmmmm ether :^)
Yet another example of how any weapon sounds cooler in German.
Believe me, nearly everything that can shoot is outlawed here (or at least: shooting with it). During the days of the RAF (a terror organisation active in the 70's and 80's) the police even monitored sales of certain types of alarm clocks (which could be used for time bombs).
Prosecuter said they didn't take those guns for serious and up to now violators received just slap and. They're changing their attitude. But this is not a big issue (just a heaven's gift for journalists).
Yours, Martin
...a search for Spud Guns turned up 1900 hits (most of them heavily dented).
Knock yourselves out! (but do be careful about it).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
frozen oranges are good too if you've got the right diamater pvc
My artillery (back in the day)
D-Cell Battery. (never. never. never! ever aim at a person!!!!!!!)
Screwdriver with a couple wraps of duct tape. (same warning as above)
Plastic Baseball bat. (easily shot 75 yards, also went through old plywood)
enormous spitballs (blew through the wall of the garage, and left 4" bruises)
Grill ignitors are where its at people. Also, if you have access to some sort of plumbing pre-fabrication shop (as my dad does) its great to use enfield pipe, used for acid waste, and sealed with a high current that melts the plastic together.
Just a little thought for all you spud gun hopefuls.
http://www.ipexinc.com/industrial/enfusion.html
Bombe de Terre
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
The one designed in this page looks nice. Here is the english version.
THis looks like the perfect gift for my neice. Im trying to be a bad influence on her.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
We called them polish cannons in the mid-70s. You duct-taped two tennis ball cans (back when they were sold in metal cans). The top can had the bottom cut out, the bottom can had a small hole in it for loading ligher fluide and for ignition.
Used to shoot a tennis ball pretty far, I forget.
About 20 years ago, as a kid in Seattle, we used to shoot my balls out of guns made from soda cans and fuled with lighter fluid. At least we did until I had the great idea to soak my balls with lighter fluid before we fired them. The first few times were great, but soon one of my flaming balls set the neighbor's yard on fire.
How do you ID someone for hairspray? Come on..get real. A kid walks into the store and gets questioned why he is buying hairspray you know he isn't going to freak out and run out of the store scared that the police will get him he will just say for his hair. For that matter what store clerk will actually be able to ask that question while keeping a straight face. You can't stop people from building these but i'm sure you can catch people using them. Potatos flying at these speeds don't go unnotcied...unless your in a secluded area which is safe anyway.
"I believe in everything in moderation. Including moderation." -Dean DeLeo, Stone Temple Pilots
My age is showing....
We used Gatorade cans and LOTS of electrical tape. We set ours off with a lighter held to a hole made with a can opener (The triangular type).
It's probably a "Good Thing" (tm) that we didn't think about compressed air and PVC pipe.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
getSexySig();
... that now, the French-fries-bazooka will be the equivalent to a fragmentation grenade, right? :)
We used to make them out of the old soda (pop for the midwesterners) cans - i.e. NOT aluminum, but steel. I don't think they make theses anymore. We used to solder them together and fire tennis balls sprayed with hairspray - the tennis ball fuzz helps to hold the fuel.
We could put a dent in a stop sign at 50 yards.
They also kept away kids from other neighborhoods on mischief night...
..........FULL STOP.
State viewpoints are different. Texas has a section in the Penal code for firearms which makes anything that has a barrel and fires a projectile with expanding gas (other than hand-compressed gas and CO2 cartriges, i.e. chemical propellants) an illegal weapon, no matter what the projectile is.
6 00.html#pe001.46.01
Search for "Zip gun" on this page:
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/pe/pe0004
- Sig
These have been around for years and years. We made one in high school about eight years ago.
Fijian youth, especially around Guy Fawkes Day and
New Years, are fond of the Bamboo Cannon.
I'll describe it here as perhaps some of our Asian
and South American readers in areas where Bamboo is
common are not familiar.
Giant Bamboo approximately 6' - 10 ' long is reamed
using a bit of broken glass tied to the end of a stick.
One or two thick boles at the base are left
intact. Note, this is 3" to 5" ID thickwall cannon
barrel once done. A hole of abou 1" dia is made
jus above the last intact bole. For propellent, a
bit of kerosene is poured into the hole and set
burning with a bit of rag that has been tied to
a bit of wire, dipped in kerosene, and set burning.
Let the kerosene in the tube burn long enough so
that when it's blow out, it smokes real well.
Allow the barrel to fill with smoke, apply your
igniter (rag on stick) and it puts a M80 to shame.
Once going it cycles really well. Fire, wait for
tube to fill again, fire, and so on. Just have to
add a little kerosene from time to time.
For added excitement, the barrel can be wrapped with rope.
Kids used to make their own from coconut husk fibers.
After reinforced barrel fills with smoke, stuff
an immature breadfruit about half way down the
tube. Fire away.
Is that what the film/series was all about?
Smashed potatoes?
Simpy
I bet if the Germans marched to Paris armed with nothing but potato cannons, the French would still surrender.
Trolling is a art,
Come one... That's funny stuff. Since when is it taboo to pick on the Germans, or the French?
just the phrase "potato bazooka" is funny.
Excuse me, I need to go get some PVC pipe at Home Depot now.
This just in:
The US Government is releasing it's "convincing evidence" on Iraq's possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Reading from the report is US Special Consultant and former Vice President Dan Quayle.
"The US is proud to release conclusive information on Iraq's development of Weapons of Mass Destruction. These weapons in question are Potatoe Guns..... We also believe Iraq is engaged in the development of Nuclear Potatoes. As such, US warships will be confiscating all shipments of Potatoes destined for Iraq, as well as shipments of hairspray. We will also be putting forth a UN security resolution forbidding Iraq to posses piping of any kind."
Seems like a lot of people on here are reminiscing about their childhood so here goes: Coming from a farming village there were many things to play with on the farms in my area. One of the coolest things was a crow-scarer. It was a tube about 1.5 meters long that was connected at a 45 degree angle to its frame and storage box. Every 10 minutes the pressure would build up inside the tube and the propane gas would be released making a loud bang, scaring the crows. I don't think that the gas was ignited though. We stuffed all manner of things down the tube; turnips, cow pats, people's socks and shoes, gravel. Nothing really worked; it all got jammed about halfway down... until we found some empty paint tins. Putting these over the end of the tube kept the pressure in for longer, and boy would they fly. Using people's bikes as target practice was great fun The only problem was that we couldn't adjust the timing so waiting 10 minutes for each bang got boring after a while.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I once shot a piece of crumpled toilet paper right through a wooden fence on an inner-city backyard. I did use a cannon, and plenty of actual gunpowder though.The entire backyard was afterwards filled with a thick gunsmoke fog. I'm still surprised that neither the police nor the firedepartment showed up.
:)
I must add that although I lit the fuse on the cannon, I claim complete lack of responsibility for the air and noise pollution, as well as the damage to the fence. All blame shall lie with the crazy author of children's novels whose 50th birthday was the occasion for the abovementioned event.
Same setup earlier: soda cans with tennis balls, only back then you could use rubbing alchohol. It made a really nice flame, at dusk especially.(They've changed the concentration of alchohol in the stuff they sell now, so you can't use that any more. What is this freaking world coming to?)
I've seen 99% ethanol and isopropanol in drug stores around here. It's not *all* 70%.
When we tried flaming projectiles, the wind from firing blew them out.
Any bets the calibre of those PVC pipes is 88mm ?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
The IRA have been doing this for years.... With drain tubes against the shoulder. Aparrently they used packs of digestive biscuits as their recoil absorber!
German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.
Anyone want to guess what they will be firing from these things next?
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
... in Germany. We were at a convention, and a Dutch guy removed a huge "kartoffelkanone" from his trunk. It was the best day of the convention :)
German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork. I love the fact that the German Police decided that potatoes arn't enough and that they had to test other types of projectiles ?? You can just see them "Hey Sarge, these potatoes are really dangerous. Lets try shooting cardboard wrapped concrete and see if that's as dangerous !!"
Mhh as a german i'm wondered, where they got this news from. 'Cause i never heard about such thing, except in a us tv-series. I don't know anyone who build it i don't find any of the "informations" in the article in other news. Neither in newspapers, nor in tv-news, nor in the net and i'm pretty sure they would have made something out if it. :)).
Probably our government just thinks about security through abscurity
why you bunch of wipper-snappers, we were doing this with duct tape, *ahem* beverage cans, and lighter fluid 30 years ago, and we knew it wasn't original then.
We've had these in America for atleast 30 years or more. I can understand that it takes a little while for our trends to make it to europe, but come on this isn't news. Next thing you know, they'll be an article about how 80's pop music is just now becoming popular in europe
Building the things was pretty simple -- all you need is a strong tube, a projectile, propellant, and an ignition system. As others in this thread have mentioned, my friends' ignition of choice was the ignitor from old BBG grills. This worked fairly well -- you actually get a trigger to work with -- but they always seemed to break down after a while, so the design had to be built such that you could swap out the ignitition every now and then.
That is how Jeff burned his damn face off :-)
See, like I say, everyone would just sit around in their dorm, building these guns and preparing their next shots. Jeff was about to shoot his when, wouldn't you know it, the ignition jammed. Bummer. So as usual, he unscrewed the back to get at the ignition to check on it. Unwisely, this involved taking a look into the ignition chamber to see -- well, the back end of a potato & some invisible ether.
Did I mention that? I guess not -- their propellant of choice was ether. I have no idea where they got the stuff, but damn it was good for making a nice little controlled explosion. Or in this case, uncontrolled explosion.
So anyway, there Jeff was staring into the back end of the gun, when somehow he bumped the trigger.
And it went off.
And the ether exploded.
Remember how when you were a little kid, and you liked playing with the garden hose in the summer, but your evil older brother (that would be me :-) would hide around the corner pinching off the flow, and you'd get confused and look into the hose trying to find the water -- and just at that very moment that bastard of an older brother would uncrimp the hose and blast you in the face?
This was a lot like that, but with fire instead of water.
So anyway, there Jeff sits, with a ball of fire around his head, and well you get the idea. I wasn't actually there when this happened -- I was back at my dorm, probably cowering under the bed from my psycho buddies (or reading email more likely...). But Jeff was my roommate and, about five minutes after the incident, Jeff comes staggering back to the room. He has no eyebrows -- just white molten lumps where they used to be. He has no eyelashes. Or rather, he does have some remnants of eyelashes, but they are half an inch long each and there is is a six inch line across the front of his hairless brow. And exactly in the middle of his (now apparently sunburned) forehead is a bright red circle -- as if someone had thrown a tennis ball, dripping with paint, really hard at the middle of his forehead.
Jeff took a little nap at that point. He woke up a day or two later, ordered some pizza, ate, and went back to sleep. He slept for most of the next several days, it took a couple of weeks for the tennis ball spot to fade away, and it took a month or more for the hair to grow back. He wore a hat a lot those days, IIRC :-)
So, let this be a lesson to you spud projectionists -- the back end of the gun is just as dangerous as the front!
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
My friends and I decided to use ours to shoot down a beehive a couple months back. Here's the link.
Flame Thrower from Hell!
Do NOT try this!
I tried some experiments shooting gasoline from a large pneumatic gun. First, I fired about a cup at a campfire from several feet away, making a big fireball when it hit the flames. The next logical step was to duct tape some newspaper to the end of the barrel and shoot gasoline through the burning newspaper. I tried it first with my small .75" gun and only a cup of gas. It sprayed a burning cloud of fire almost 10 feet. The compressed air agitates the gasoline and breaks it up into a fine aerosol, allowing it to burn incredibly fast - almost like fuel-air explosives.
Gasoline tends to gum up the plastic inside the gun, so be careful not to dissolve your gun. Finally, on the 4th of July 1997, I was feeling lucky. I broke out my giant 8-foot tall 2" cannon and filled it about a gallon of gasoline and diesel mixed together. An equivalent volume of water in this gun usually sprays over 40 feet, making a big cloud of mist and vapour.
With gasoline and some burning paper on the muzzle, I was able to shoot a HUGE white-hot cloud of pure hell on earth that stretched out 40 feet long and about 20 feet wide at the widest point. It was such an overwhelming experience that I couldn't even remember the sound it made very clearly. It wasn't really an explosion, but more of a "ffwhuup" noise, sucking the air in from all directions to consume in the inferno. I got a sunburn in seconds from it. Some people with their backs turned 200 feet away could feel the heat. As the fireball consumed itself it cooled and rose upwards, changing from blinding white to orange, then to a smoky red.
As it rose, it formed the classic mushroom shape we associate with nuclear explosions. The hot black smoke from the diesel fuel continued spinning slowly upwards above treetop level, making everything behind it ripple in the heat. I thought it was such an incredible experience to wield the power of god in a PVC pipe, that after a few more beers (Spud Works does not promote drinking) I did it again! This time I directed the combustive holocaust at the big sassafras tree in my backyard. I shit you not; every single leaf on that tree was burnt to a crisp! A year later, only half the leaves have grown back.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Not to be outdone in the world of vegetable weapons, the US Army will soon announce the turnip launcher. A high-ranking Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity said, "Turnips give us a higher caliber weapon with better all-around characteristics. We can use a wider diameter titanium pipe and a more powerful hydrogen propellant. As an added bonus, they're much more destructive on impact. These things are damn hard -- ever try to cut a turnip? In a few years, we'll have them in space. Frozen turnips are even more effective, and their shelf life is just wonderful for this kind of thing."
The US Air Force had various research projects going concerning the dangers of hitting a bird in flight. This is a real problem and has caused crashes and deaths. One of the test projects involved a cannon that fired chickens (dead) at airplanes to test their affect.
A British engineering team was interested in the project and borrowed the cannon for their own tests. They were very surprised when the birds crashed through their airplanes and destroyed them. They called in the US project revierwers to see what was happening.
The reviewers only comment?
"Thaw out the chickens before firing."
Are you Autistic? Tell me about it.
Are the police really conducting tests to determine how deadly these things can be, or how much fun?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Dagnabit,
Why i've already missed March and kite wars.
Seriously that sounds fun, almost a fun as making acetylene cannons, or for the below the age of 10 crowd tennis ball cannons/bazookas using Campbells soup cans and Zippo lighter fluid,,,drench the tennis ball in sufficient fluid and it lands on fire.
or HTH pool clorine and gas,,, or how about... man we were pyros...
Kids these days all they get is sports and pokeyman crap....kinda makes me sad. sike!
Back when I was a kid, we used to make carbide rockets. You take a 2 litre plastic coke bottle, chuck a small lump of calcium carbide in the bottom, and a dash of water. Then you'd leave the cap off, lie the bottle on it's side on the ground and wait a few seconds for the acetalyne gas to build up. Finally, hold a match near the open mouth of the bottle and whooosh! Off it would roar down the garden spraying flame and mucky water out the back.
Jeff
stty erase ^H
mod parent up!
At a place I used to work we used a huge metal pipe (not sure what it was for origeonaly) and a 6" diameter rutebegar(sp?) add setaline and O2. We have no idea where it ended up, good thing it was in northern NH where there isn't much to hit. We also had a normal potato cannon equipt with all the good stuff for get a batery to light it, you have to use a ignighter from a grill for a trigger, add a nice handle, this shit was high quality... :-)
-G
True story - about two months ago, a local man tried to hook up his icemaker to the water line. Small problem being that he hooked into his gas line. After getting no ice, he called the local appliance repair shop. He called back about 30 minutes later saying he figured out his problem when the fridge door went through his plate glass window, and across the street.
Forget upgrading the weapon, change the ammo!.
Mangos, Rambutans, Five Corner, Choosing the right ammo is just as important as building the right weapon.
Its one thing to hit a target,
another to make them go "What the F*CK is that ?"
since heaven forbid someone should correct *your* or anyone else's spelling at any time, they get turned into bloodstains
I made one of those when I was a sophmore in high school? Whats the big deal? Hasn't everyone made one or at least seen one in their life?
I'd never considered before that this is kind of like the don't publish vulnerabilities debates, except I'm on the publish side with that one.
The ultimate in spud guns...
This brings back memories. We used to play with these a bit in high school.
I have deduced that sweet potatoes make the best ammunition if you are interested in sheer destruction. The sweet potato is much harder than your garden variety russet potato, thus breaks much more stuff.
At one point, I even built a metal gun out of boredom and plumbing pipe at a summer job (working for the govt., your tax dollars at work). Never did get to test that one, but the theory was that we could a more fierce propellant (butane, Hydrogen, Plutonium, whatever...) for firing the potato. We never could decide who would have to be the first one to fire it though...
One of them says that the owner of the site never had a spud gun, doesn't condone them, and never will have one.
The cashed version says that he enjoys using his spud gun on weekends, and plans to make a double-barreled version.
Seems like the germans are now becoming spud-nazis. Guess they don't like people experimenting with spudniks
Down in Dunedin FL, there is a local museum dedicated to Police and the Military. http://www.naslemm.com On display is a spud gun manufactured by the engineering department of Smith & Wesson over 20 years ago. Big, Blue and with the S&W Logo, a bit more impressive then the tennis ball cannons, I used to build back in the 70's.
Here is a pumpkin cannon some redneck out in indiana built out of a trailer home frame (most likely his)...
pumpkin cannon
Get with the times Germany.
click
A few years ago a friend-of-a-friend showed me a potato cannon he built. I noticed a few flaws in the design:
1. Potatos are tasty. Sure, you could try to get rotten ones to use as ammo by digging through the trash, but that's just sick. I decided I'd rather use projectiles that aren't food.
2. It was hard to aim and fire... The ignitor was on the end cap and it was just a straight length of pipe with a reducing coupling. I decided on an improved design to make it fire and handle more like a bazooka.
The result was a golf ball cannon which was capable of putting a golf ball THROUGH 3/4" plywood. It also did quite a bit of damage to my fence. I later decided I should scale the design down and build something smaller for shooting less-destructive ammo, so I built a paint ball version. Like so many projects of mine, I had planned to one day make a detailed website about the construction of all my PVC weaponry, but the novelty wore off.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Me and some friends built a few of these back in high school. We even had a takedown model that screwed apart, and when assembled, measured over 6 feet long. Hairspray is for wussies though, try ether (starting fluid). I put an apple through a sheet of 1/2" plywood with ether. It kicks like a 20 gauge shotgun, and is just as loud.
I think it's spudtech.com that has an excel spreadsheet for calculating speeds and stuff for particular setups. The setup I had came out to 380mph muzzle velocity. Using that spreadsheet, I came up with a new design that hit's 720mph, over the speed of sound. Someday when I get bored, I'm going to try to accelerate an apple past the speed of sound. It will probably desintegrate before it even leaves the barrel, but it will scare my neighbors, and that's all I really want to do.
BTW, apples make better ammo. The fit better in the barrel, and if you can find a tree, they are free.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
We had those at Michigan Technological University in the late 1960s. You knock the bung out of a beer keg, screw in a piece of conduit stolen from a construction site, ram a potato down the conduit, fill the keg with hair spray through the pump hole, and ignite it with some steel wool and a zip cord. Are the Germans really that slow?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I went to a family picnic in West Virginia back in 96, and one of my wife's cousins had one there. It was great fun!! Funny thing about rednecks, since I was visiting from California (thus a "city boy") they figured I wouldn't know how to handle the thing. I fired it just as well as any of them. Probably the most exciting event was seeing who could shoot the potato the highest. Firing the potato in the little creak followed that. The novelty wore off quickly though, not to mention all our ammo was now a the bottom of a creek.
Even better, later in that same visit they decided to take me muddin', at night. So they grab two old bronco's and start climbing the hills. The one I am in gets stuck and the carburetor catches fire. After they put that truck out using their t-shirts, we all climb into the other truck. Oops, they left the lights on after shutting the truck off. (The battery was dead and they had jumped it just to take it muddin'.) Now all these rednecks are bitchin' and moaning about how we were going to have to walk back a couple of miles (Nothing to me really, I've "humped" further than that in the Corps.) What does the "city boy" do?
"How about push starting it? It is a manual."
I tell ya, sometimes people are just funny.
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
Bah, these are nothing... you need pneumatics to hit mach1 with your potato gun. There used to be a site called "Stuff the warning label said not to do" that contained such information, images, and videos >:)
In an effort to prevent copycat terrorism, authorities revealed today that the 911 terrorists did NOT use box cutters to seize the aircraft with which they toppled the Twin Towers.
In actuality, they used a diabolical device developed by Al-Qaida technicians called a "spud-gun"!
Secret CIA documents indicate further that the Twin Towers themselves would have withstood the impact from two jet airliners had not the planes been massively overweighted with the sacks of potatos brought on board by the terrorists...
Homeland Security officials are reportedly set to institute a massive surveillance program using satellites and Internet surveillance on the state of Idaho...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Imagine Dirty Harry working in a fast food restaurant...
"You want fries with that?"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yes, when these become a popular thing that incautious people are playing with, it can be very dangerous. Some idiot frat boys in my home town were playing with one and seriously injured a passerby. The person they hit lost an eye, and suffered other injury as well.
It seems each generation does many of the same things the previous generation did...and then goes around believing it was a new and unique thing. Highly innovative and clever, filled with exciting danger and evil laughs.
But the Taco is still quite young and likely to accept many more such posts of things he believes are original wacky antics.
In a few weeks he'll be posting a submission from some guy that claims to have invented the funnelator (the story will be duped the next day).
About 5 years ago one of my friends took apart an old grill and used the ignition switch to fire off his potato gun. Everything was great until he had to take it apart to clean it becuase it wasnt shooting very far. Upon putting it back together he fired it off inside his old garage (50 ft ceilings) and managed to punch a hole right through the roof.
I spent more than one evening on the run-up to Guy Fawkes Night (Nov 5th) sitting in an attic, crushing match-heads between two 10p pieces (a bit larger than a quarter, I think), nerves stretched by the imminent possibility of a flare-up. Between four of five of us, we collected the crushed heads of about 4,000 matches.
On the big night, we rammed a 6 foot steel pipe about two feet into the ground, rammed paper into it until the paper reached ground level, then poured in the match-heads, jammed a potato in the top of the pipe, and lit a fire around the base.
Then we just got on with the business of lighting a proper bonfire, making punch, roasting potatoes, setting off fireworks, and drinking. Every time anyone walked past the pipe, they would glance nervously at it. A couple of hours later, there was a tremendous thundering BOOM, and the potato went up into the stratosphere.
Yea, we built these things about 12 years ago. Lotsa fun! A friend had an abandoned station wagon (one of those 4 ton 1970's iron giants). We put a frisbee sized dent in that sumbitch, not to mention I got a first hand account of what a "juiced potato" looks like.
Interestingly enough, that same friend's father, an old refinery worker, had a look at the gun. His father is one of those know-it-all-handyman types, not to mention that as a refinery worker, he dealt with his share of piping.
He made the useful comment that PVC is generally not intended for use in a pressurized system. He was actually quite surprised that our small group of friends had yet to experience the compustion chamber actually exploding! (Of course, he could have just been trying to scare us, but his argument/credentials made sense).
FWIW, Lysol spray (which is mostly ethanol) works wonderfully, and is cheaper per unit than most hairspray.
How come Palestinians didn't discover this yet? They are in dire need of cheap weapons!
Oh well, probably there is no hairspray in a place where all women wear their hair covered.
Strength, balance, courage and reason. If you know what's this about, contact me!
I'd hardly call it a hobby....
...we were doing this in Jr. High? In 1978? They're just now gettin' the fever?
Everyone here is missing the boat... hairspray, propane... those all work OK
:)
The REAL propellant to use is ETHER!
Spudnik is built from PVC pipe (MUST USE SCH. 80), with a rifled barrel. Attached to the combustion chamber is a John Deere Ether Injector. Gives a perfectly measured, atomized spray every time. Distances in excess of 1000 yds.
Don't pick on anybody.
We played with these a lot as kids. Aqua-Net + potato + sober people, no problem. Firing them with ether is bad [weakens the PVC cement after a few firings and gun explodes], other non-squishy projectiles are bad [jam in the barrel and gun explodes], and impaired people of course don't mix well with firearms.
The germans have really dropped the ball [potato] on this one.. there were some guys in canberra cbd, australia, 3 years ago firing lemons to heights of 1km, which ripped off a car door on the way down, and went through a few roofs to boot.
Amusingly, they were caught by a cop who reckonised the hard lemons [or remains there of] as one of his family members, if i recall correctly.
when we were kids, we built one of these cannons, and started shooting marshmallows.
the toughest kid in the group decided that he was man enough to take a marshmallow to the stomach...
well, he wasn't.
he got hit and went down like a ton of bricks. he was on the ground for a good 15 minutes.
three weeks later he still had a red mark on his stomach from where he was hit and everyone in gym class told him it looked like a hickey!
Get with the times PVC pipe connected with pvc cement removes the chances of flying metal shards Also: Deisel engine starter contains 90% ether which will over double the range of a hairspray fueled gun Lastly: a Grill ignitor works far better than a battery Silly Germans
Here's a book on how to build these things....
l
http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks4/ballis/index.htm
Oh heavens... If I had a nickle for every story about my flaming balls...
Spudgun Technology Center
Yes, there is actually a site that will build a spudgun for those who are technically challenged.
They will also build spudguns (or help you spec out your own) for those who have to one-up their neighbor.
That which depends upon me, I can do; that which depends on the enemy cannot be certain. --Mei Yao-ch'en
http://www.puttyworld.com/putandpotcan.html
Awesome movies with the camera behind bulletproof glass and the gun shooting right at it!
in high school. Took a bunch of the smaller coffee cans and cut half moons in the bottom. I then duct taped about 5 togather alternating the half moons. Last I punched a nail hole in the bottom can. You poor about a half cup of alcohol in the top and shake the whole thing until all the surface area is covered then give it a minute so that the alcohol can evaoporate. Stick something in the top ( plastic gatorade bottles worked well ) and strike a match near the nail hole. It was very very loud and powerfull. The last time i ever used it I set everything up like I'd done a hundred times before but when I put the match next to the nail hole the whole thing went off like bomb ( I think it was a taping failure)! The detonation was so loud and violent that I was completely disoriented for about 30 seconds. Then the realization that I prolly have invisible burning alcohol all over me and I couldn't feel my hands brought me back to reality. A check for hands/fingers and burning sensations soon followed. I haven't touched it since ( about 8 years ago ).
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Boromir and Faramir were only brothers in the movie. Read the book's, for crying out loud.
An m-80 is a type of small explosive, like you would pick up at a fireworks shop. It's about 4cm long and 1cm wide, cylindrical in shape with a fuse about 1.5cm long protuding from the top.
They're very loud, and illegal in many states now (don't know about foreign countries). They also happen to have the nasty reputation of having blown off a few people's hands.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
My friends and I used to launch tennis balls using the same method back in the early / mid 80's. We found out AquaNet works the best ;-)
Now, I use the same concept when I play Paintball - but without the hairspray. I took a few pieces of smooth PVC pipe, use 1 as the barrel, a larger one as a "tank" and connect them togeather with a 12v outdoor sprinkler actuator. Fill the tank with air using a bicycle pump, wrap a dozen or so paintballs in tissue and put them in the barrel. When I trip the actuator, a dozen paintballs go flying. Accuracy isn't great, but I get at least 100 feet most of the time. It's used mostly as intimidation and a last-resort against a bunch of people or a bunker. The down side is that it takes a few minutes to load and get the air pressure up.
My good sig is in the laundry
HA! I love all the references to people losing eyes! It sounds somebody's mom wrote that story.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
you could easily change the design of your "spud gun" to use pressurized C02 and some kind of valve (try a lid from a pringles can) to get around the zip gun laws.
How about launching a 10lb pumpkin 4000 feet? http://www.cannon-mania.com/pumpkin_chunkin.htm
There is a book titled
"Mortars the Ultamite home hobby Weapon"
It always casues rased eyebrows.
Handy for duck hunting too....
D.A.K.D.A.E.---- Deny all Knowledge, Destroy All Evidence
Don't any of you geeks read fine literature? Go search for backyard ballistics at amazon. Many fine designs. I especially like the devices powered by nothing more than a bicycle air pump and a pressure chamber. Who needs these barbaric explosive devices...
JR
Texas? Illegal weapons? I thought everyone can already have a real, lethal at long distance, gun over there. Also, it's still possible to compress gas to very high pressure by hand. Just like you lift a car to change a tire. Just takes some time to do it.
At first, he thought it didn't work. He aimed it straight up, ignited the payload, and 'poof'. No more potato. Later, he aimed it out a wooden plyboard to see if he could figure out the problem. As soon as he did that, 'poof'-*CRACK*. A potato-shaped hole in the wood.
Turned out his mixture was so volatile that the potato was being hurled at speeds to make it nearly naked to the human eye.
I guess you could say the potatos kept slipping 'fry-ght' by him.
Of course, it only went downhill from there as we immediately realized realized that our newly more powerful cannon could shoot much heavier projectiles or throw a good old 'tater a hell of a lot further. I think somewhere a video still exists of an unidentifiable starchy mass flying straight through the funnel cake truck parked in the neighbors' yard.
This reminds me of the ones we used to make out of beer cans, back when they were made out of steel and we were full of bad ideas.
We'd take six or seven of those cut out the top and bottom, stack them using duck tape with a final can at the bottom with half the top taken out and a small hole at the bottom. Tennis balls were the amunition of choice and lighter fluid the propellant.
I remember balls going for a couple of hundred feet into the air... ah the good old days.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I never complain about moderations but this one takes the cake.
-1 Offtopic?
-1 Overrated
Moderators, get off the crack pipe! Read the linked article. It is a fscking police blotter of bruised little old ladies, kids missing eyes and wounded dogs, all injured by hooligans shooting random people with their "potato bazooka." Yippee. It is not about a bunch of geeks happily running around popping off spuds at each other.
Get a clue!
Since, to my knowledge (IANAL), in the state of Texas these things are banned because they can be considered a firearm (some lame excuse of combustible material). So my brother built one using a sealed chamber with a ball valve. He uses a bike's tire pump to pressurize it, and even has a gauge built into it. The cool thing about this on, you can load anything including water. At about 70 psi, it could shoot a ping pong ball (filled with water) about 100-125 yards.
Prime minister Tony Blair has reported London has been under constant potato barrage for the past 36 hours.
Germany Reunited! Coming to a France near you!
so Germany ir reunited, and there is talk of arming Japan. And Mitsubishi has Zero down financing. Why am I the only one that see's a problem here?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Here's what a pumpkin can do to your car.
The scanned letter is a fake. For what reason would the ATF date and sign a letter with XXXXXXXX as name? Notice, the "XXXXXXXX"s are on the paper from the same "typewriter."
Same Stupidity, Different Decade.
Also in Denver, 1970s. (17th and Hudson, east of City Park)
For me (and my older brothers) it was Schlitz beer cans (back when they were steel, not Flimsy Al) duct tape, tennis balls, and ever-increasingly-dangerous fluid propellants
Started with hairspray, then naptha (Zippo fuel -- had to heat the beer can up to vaporize it) then gasoline from the lawnmower.
Strangely, we all kinda stopped doing it right after that.
...Geeks should take the initiative on shoot jocks first? its a pre-emptive strike to prevent future terror. According to my government, thats ok.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To provide information so that needless accidents like this do not happen in the future, I present the quality ingredients necessary to build a safe, fun spud gun... Lord knows you're just going to be provoked to do this anyways, so might as well do this right and safe. As usual, you are at your own risk, so I assume no responsibility for your stupidity in embarking on this venture...
Ingredients...
1. 1 2" X 3' long piece of PVC Tubing.
2. 1 2" PVC "T" Joint.
3. 1 2" X 8" long piece of PVC Tubing.
4. 1 2" to 1" Reducer Fitting.
5. 1 1" X 4" long piece of PVC Tubing.
6. 1 1" PVC Tube Cap.
7. 1 3" to 2" Reducer Fitting.
8. 1 3" X 1' long piece of PVC Tubing.
9. 1 3" PVC Screw-On Drain Cap.
10. 1 1 Coleman Lantern Igniter.
12. 1 3" Grinding wheel for grinder.
11. 1 Small container PVC Cement.
12. 1 Broomstick handle or like equivalent.
Procedure:
First, a word about cementing... Get the type of PVC cement that has the little ball in it and is kind of runny... There are many types, but good ol' Ace PVC cement does just fine... Also, make sure to cement all of the available surface area of the joint... Don't be sloppy, but don't skimp, as this is what keeps your head on... Additionally, when finished with your project let it sit and DON'T flick the flint! The vapor is quite flamable, and you want it to fully cure at room temp, not to mention it'll put a 3' flame out the other end when you do flick it, burning your furnature, etc... so be patient and wait... OK, now for the fun stuff.
Bevel the end of the 2" X 3' PVC Tube. This allows for good shearing of the potato and prevents excessive pressure buildup from wedging. I just put a Makita grinder in a vice (gently) and beveled the end on the edge of the grinding disk... Note: this is kind of a no-no (nonferrous things on grinding stones are bad), so THROW THE DISK AWAY WHEN YOU ARE DONE WITH IT! This is why I don't use a grinding wheel instead of a stone... Cheep!
Cement the unbeveled end to the 2" "T".
Cement The 8" section to the other end of the tube.
Next, put the 2" to 1" reducer in the bottom section of the T.
Cement the 1" Plug to the 1" tube and cement the other end into the 1" reducer Plug... Now it kinda looks like a gun.
Cement the 2" to 3" Reducer to the other end of the 2" X 8" (unbeveled) section.
Measure the depth of the 3" Drain end cap section (unthreaded end) and draw a line on the 3" X 1' section that corresponds to that depth (do not test fit... they won't come apart).
Then drill a hole about 1/2" past the mark you just made on that tube. This hole should be smaller then the threads on the flint mechanism. Idealy you should use a drill bit and tap that corresponds to the thread of the flint, but you can thread it with a bolt with the same thread as the flint (Most designs thread from the inside... if yours threads from the outside, pitch it and get one that threads frome inside, as it is safer this way).
Drill the hole, tap it, and then take the flint mechanism apart in a fashion that you can thread it in to the hole from the inside (open end works great here). It is usually best to keep as much of it assembled as possible, as its a bear to add flints once its together (it can be done, however). Make sure that the flint points so the spark path points to the screw cap... this produces a better flame front and prevents potato shreds from gooing the flint.
Finally cement the drain Plug end to the marked edge of the 3" section (next to the flint. Leave the cap off, so things can air out once its done.
Get the gun section you were working with before and cement the free end of the 3" PVC tube to the reducer in a manor where the flint is perpendicular to the handle and so it is on the side you use to write with (your preferred hand).
From this point you wait the max full-set time for the glue you bought (not 5 minutes, like 48 hours or so), Its on your glue container.
After this point the rest is self explainatory, (broomstick shoves potato to ridge in "T") So have fun and use with proper gun ettiquette, as this is essentially about as dangerous.
Options... (realy stupid ones) Use ether (I like Pyroil, it has upper cylinder lubricant!) instead of hairspray... Its more finicky, but is cleaner and whohoo what a kick when it works! With ether you spray the cap, not the chamber, so be careful, and use it sparingly, as not to have it run past the threads...
Good Luck, and pitch the gun when the flint wears out, as the joints eventually will break down under heat and pressure... Keep it safe!
Every year I venture down to the hills of Appalachia in southern Ohio for my brother-in-law's annual summer party (a.k.a. Redneck Fest). Invariably the one legged chicken from across the road ventures out to taunt the drunken fool with potato gun. I, er uh, we really hate that chicken. Do you know how hard it is shoot a one legged chicken with a potato gun when you're drunk off your ass?
My spud gun, without me is useless. Without my spud gun, I am useless. I must fire my spud gun true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will....
My spud gun and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count.
We will hit...
My spud gun is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights, and its barrel. I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage. I will keep my spud gun clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...
Before God I swear this creed. My spud gun and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.
Yup...and they had waterproof fuses. They used to sell them as normal fireworks. Last box of them I saw was back in HS in about 1980. We got a box of them, took them to our neighborhood pool during the winter, tied them to rocks, lit them and dropped them in...like depth chargers. Found out that summer we had cracked the bottom of the pool. But, the best thing to do with them in school, was to find someone who was sitting on the can in the bathroom on one of the lower floors...run upstairs, light an M-80, and flush it...thing would blow up, and shoot water out of the john's down below...hehehe...talk about a wet suprise..hehehe. Had to quit that when the pipes at Central High suddenly got blow out a few times....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Down south, the bubbas are going to have a hard time deciding whether to throw the spud in the gun or in the still.
Bear in mind that in some places, I think California and Britain, laws have been considered to ban spud guns. You can make a law to ban anything, but practice show here that it is *easy* to make a gun out of whatever is available.
Yet though it is easy and a lot of us here have made them, no one here shot anyone and killed them with it. No laws or punishment is necessary because there is already a law against killing someone. You only have to punish those who break the laws of nature, killing or maiming someone and the destruction of their property.
Likewise, we don't need any gun laws at all. We already have one in the US called the 2nd amendment, plus the various laws based on the 'natural law' above.
Like spud guns, which can indeed kill and maim, guns which shoot lead bullets (and spud technology could...) can easily be made in a workshop, and sophisticated guns can be made in a machine shop. It is so easy to do, that is cannot in reality, be controlled. Nor is is a bad thing to avoid controlling it. We just have to enforce the 'natural law'. And punish the perpetrator, not the inanimate object.
Spud Guns Do Not Kill.
Nor does a Smith and Wesson.
The bad guy kills.
. . .the Germans out of socialism and restore their war loving pride.
Look out, France.
in my day we used to make these too, only i used black powder and instead of shooting potatoes we shot spent CO2 cartriges filled with more black powder and a delay fuse. basicly what we had was a cheap home-made mortor. and the launcher was made from 1.5inch PVC pipe. Dangerous? well you have to be vary ginger with your initial charge! this would launch a cartridge about 200 meters up in the air in about 1 second then it would promptly explode raining fun shrapnel! kind of like a delayed shotgun effect, you should see what this thing did to a construction site. Ahh.. childhood memories...
This was already mentioned in one comment, but it was in a reply to another comment WAY down the page.
For REAL potato-gun/homemade cannon fun, Check out Sam Barros' PowerLabs cannon research page, which includes photos and videos of some amazing fun.
I built one of those 10 years ago when I was in high school. :)
I don't think the neighbors ever found out where the huge dent in there garage door came from.
Ok, anybody who I know made potato guns in high school (yes to echo the already redundant statement). But how many of us stopped at the wussy little hairspray propellant? Seriously, I remember moving well beyond that. While most of the time we stayed with potato's (especially since I went to college in Idaho), the propellant system was moved to a propane system. Much easier to use to, just buy one of those cheap propane camping stoves (where the stove is on top of the tank, one burner, small propane tank), then buy some good black pvc.
We'd buy about 10 inches of wide pvc, with a screw on end. This end piece was attached to the tank, so it could be easily removed. Only needed to drill one hole there, then we made another small hole for a camping lantern sparker in that large piece. Then we just got an adaptor for our large pipe, to a pipe about half it's size (potato width), which was the barrel. Made an easy muzzleloader.
More precisely, this article: Durchschlagende Wucht.
;-)
At the bottom there also is a link to the corresponding Spiegel TV video. It's called Die Rückkehr der Kartoffelkanone (Return of the potato gun / cannon), so that indicates already that this kind of weapon isn't exactly new. But that shall not keep everyone here from making fun of Germans!
The guy who got one in the eye was hit by an apple. So that was shot from an apfelkanone, right?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
If you wanted to have a revolution or columbine 2 and didn't have the cash/access to real weapons this would be an alternative. Like they said in the artlcle cement filled etc... could cause a lot of damage. How about powdered laundry soap and gasoline filled projectiles. Instant napalm gun. How about a soup can filled with nails. Want to really protest the WTO and don't want your weapon traceable? Build your own. To the truly creative, and cheap this could be a great arsenal. Or it can just be fun like automatic rifles and tin cans.
God forbid they should just give the kids real guns and teach them how to use them responsibly. Then maybe they'd spend the afternoon at a shooting range under adult supervision instead of getting into trouble building dangerous pseudo weapons.
Not only did some of my friends make this in high school, I believe they won an award at our small town science fair.
I'm suprised noone has mentioned (at least in my quick scan I didn't see the link) the Pneumatic Spud Gun
According to the web page they are 5 times as powerful.
kojent
Isn't that what most interests Slashdot moder...erm, readers...?
And I'm sure the potato weapon was invented by a Brit. Everybody knows that, right?
In a recent issue of "Meat & Poultry" magazine, editors quoted from "Feathers," the publication of the California Poultry Industry Federation, telling the following story:
It seems the US Federal Aviation Administration has a unique device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane's windshield at approximately the speed the plane flies.
The theory is that if the windshield doesn't crack from the carcass impact, it'll survive a real collision with a bird during flight. It seems the British were very interested in this and wanted to test a windshield on a brand new, speedy locomotive they're developing.
They borrowed the FAA's chicken launcher, loaded the chicken and fired. The ballistic chicken shattered the windshield, went through the engineer's chair, broke an instrument panel and embedded itself in the back wall of the engine cab. The British were stunned and asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if everything was done correctly.
The FAA reviewed the test thoroughly and had one recommendation:
"Use a thawed chicken."
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. Isn't that a convenience store?
Yeah, I once stopped at one of these in rural southwest Missouri... they even sold fireworks there too. Kinda boggled this city boy's mind. Must be fun to be a hillbilly... for a while anyway, until you get tired of going to family reunions to find dates.
is AquaNet (unscented)..
i've been shooting potato guns for years and this will get your potato further and higher than others.
I have been doing this for years, I can get a potao 200 yards or more, never did in near any cops so I can't say they would be mad or not. Oh I like rubing alcohal better.
I had a friend who made one, and did a demonstration for us.... :) It turned the potato into mashed potato quite well (no sign of the skin anywhere LOL). He used about a 5 foot pvc pipe, so I guess it was pretty fast, since you say that 6 feet gets you approx. 200mph. The way he made it (as far as firing goes) was to use one of those "spin-strikers" from an old coleman camp lantern. And LOTS of Aquanet. It was quite fun :)
I was making these 10 years ago.
In grade 8. These people sound like complete idiots with the number of injuries that have resulted. Myself and another friend and I had tried a large number of the chaotic recipes found in the old 'anarchy' text files, some with success, some without, but never resulting in injury. These people are morons if people are getting hurt.
And wd40...or gas works better.
Only once did we ever come close to hurting someone, and that was when we shot it straight up (or thought we had) and it went out of my friends backyard, and landed on the roof of someones car, beside the baby a woman had put on it for a moment.
Well..then there was the crow on the phoneline..we put a bunch of marbles in after the potato...it sort of exploded. And that was an accident too.
Been donea togun. html
http://hardwire.shlick.net/~wax/graphic.pot
Good info and have seen his propane powered version. Serious artist.
Back when East and West Germany reunited, Dave Letterman had a top 10 list with the subject:
.
"Top 10 Ways France Is Celebrating German Reunification"
I don't remember all of them, but I'll never forget number 1 . .
#1 Cut up white bedsheets into convenient flag-sized squares.
Ralph
My motto is: Never give up - unless it's harder than you want it to be.
You'll shoot your eye out kid!!! -- An apple fired from one of the guns almost took out the eye of a middle-aged man near the Baltic coast.
I just think it's interesting that the blunderbuss has been reinvented. But the fact that they're aiming them at people is real bad, I think.
That said, you are seeing the true meaning of the American 2nd Amendment: each amendment prohibits the government from trying to do something that is highly stupid, because it can't.
Governments that try to violate those principles get away with it for a time -- but either they learn, or they fall, or the country fails.
In the case of the 2nd Amendment, you can't prevent people from defending themselves; and arming themselves is part of that.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I should also add that a potato gun can be as dangerous, if not more than a normal firearm. Use with caution, or not at all. I have seen someone get hit with a potato and almost die (square in the chest, leaving ~ 10" diameter black/blue mark for quite a while). Also, basic firearms safety is needed. Never look into the chamber to see why it is not igniting, (burning off eyebrows & bangs is not fun). Also hair spray may not be the best fuel as it leaves a residue and has many chemicals, I prefer starting fluid, (don't take my word for it tho). I have never seen/heard of it happening, but make sure you take time in building a spud gun using quality materials because blowing up a PVC pipe in your hands could cause death/serious injury. IMPORTANT: COMBUSTION INSIDE A PVC CHAMBER LEADS TO A SLOW THINNING OF THE CHAMBER WALL, CHECK OFTEN FOR SIGNS OF WEAR, BUILDING A NEW GUN IS CHEAPER THAN GOING TO THE DOCTOR TO HAVE SHARDS OF PVC PULLED OUT OF YOU BODY.
One of my co-workers made an extreme potato howitzer when he was younger. This friggin monster runs on ether and has an automobile ignition system! Do NOT try this at home!
@sshatrack
When I was about 15, some friends of mine and I built one of these using metal steam pipe. We used a propane tank and valvecock though, and a grill igniter. Talk about a boom! We also tried it with homemade shotshell grenades just for the hell of it. That was seriously nuts in retrospect, but damn it was fun. If you don't know how to make shotshell grenades, don't ask. I ain't about to tell. Those things are seriously dangerous.
Some idiots once put the lower part of a mop (the thing you clean your bathroom floor with that looks like your mother in law's hairstyle) into this special gun and fired at someone about 200 meters away. Broke him both legs. (Try to explain that to the ambulance ... "this here mop did it! Really!")
btw: British Airways (or was it the USA? don't remember) caught up to this and copied the idea (not the mop idea though). They loaded the gun with a dead chicken, measured the distance like Lufthansa did, and fired.
The chicken went through the windshield, through the pilot's seat, through the console behind the driver (or whatever was there) and into the wall behind it.
British Airways (or whoever) complained to Germany. Germany sent two engineers there, looked at the setup, and advised them to un-freeze the chicken before firing.
Home Page
Not that I'm suggesting anyone try this, nor admitting to have known anybody who has tried this, but soda cans filled and frozen fly much further (I assume). Acetylene ignites well, too (so I'm told). Ah, college...those were the days...
We used to make a similar device out of Campbell's soup cans with both ends cut out (except the last one - this also was when the cans were still a 3-piece design) and taped together. We used a tennis ball for the projectile and would fire it down the hallways of our dorm. The real fun, I discovered a few years later with thick steel tubing and a lean mixture of oxygen and acetylene - you could'nt even see the tennis ball as it left the barrel! I would not suggest trying this at home kids - do this wrong and you might end up as a Darwin Award nominee.
metholated spirits works much better than sticky hairspray or RP7
put a cap full in the chamber and shake
use it on warm days as if its cold it wont evaporate properly
thump-thump
Arnold Engineering Design Center in Tullahoma, TN.
The facility tests every engine used by the Air Force. The impact range is a simple shed housing all the hardware that they bring outside when the weather is right... There are a bunch of old test subjects sitting stacked on the ground outside. Some are totally destroyed.
Oh and they get birds, I think turkeys actually, from local farmers... totally unfrozen... They're split on whether the British myth is actually true.
Who uses hairspray? I mean reaaaaaly... A real spud gun artist uses a self-igniting propane torch to kick it off... A True artist plays it safe and uses CO2 w/a pressure gauge to fire...
... as for the article - I'm so glad they mentioned film canisters with sand and toilet paper tubes with concrete - I hadn't thought about *those* before... uggh...
Masking/duct tape for sealants? HA! A real artist uses schedule 40 PVC and welds it with the solvents... No leakage = farther & faster potatos!
And yes folks - it's legal here in the USA! There was a bunch of people concerned about ATF coming down on them, so they asked for a ruling... ATF doesn't classify them as firearms...
"Hey! Hey! Careful! You could put somebody's wall out with that.
Seeing a potato cannon again after all this time produces *stirrings*, raising a renewed adolescent fascination with mindless destruction and the deepest regret that I never got to build one.
I admit it: just seeing one of those things again, makes me want to destroy mindlessly.
It is interesting to observe the cultural differences and surprises.
I mean, yes, there were, as I remember some incidents in the United States that caused concern, but it seems hard to imagine Germans--even young ones--of all people going through the trouble of building these things and not bothering themselves too much about who or what is down range.
Stranger still is yet another instance of an internet news paradox: find a phenomenon you *don't* want anyone to imitate, write about it to tell everyone how bad it is and, presto! One hour later, half the world knows exactly how to do it...
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
I mean, who hasn't made a spud-gun before? A friend and I got picked up by the police when we were kids for potato-gunning a local golf course. I thought everyone had done this, or done something like this.
On a side note: Because of the size of PVC pipe you have to use, you can also use the cannons to fire tennis balls. They don't hurt as much, but get way better range and accuracy.
Just skip the whole olive part. Here in the south, we just throw the whole firecracker at the intended target (which frequently happens to be my brother).
Somewhere in Idaho, a potato farmer and his family are rejoicing.
Producer: NEXT!!
Ralph Wiggum: Chicken necks
Morgen dringen wir in Irland ein!*
*Tomorrow we invade Ireland!
A website has been found with a photo of Bert and Mr. Potato Head in the Middle East. We have been unable to decode this message but will keep you updated on the Taliban Tater.
The PIAA ( Potato (or Potatoe if you are Dan Quayle) Industry Association of America finds the current potato trend disturbing to say the least.
.38 spudspreader).
.34 spudspreader).
.34 sspudspreader).
Hilary "I love big bags (of chips)" Rosen has issued the following statement in this leaked memo...
To be brief we have laid out the terms of the infringements so please look over the document and give me your input.
Begin Doc....
1. Contributory Infringement
Liability for contributory infringement attaches to "one who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another potato distributor. . . [L]iability exists if the defendant engages in personal conduct that encourages or assists the infringement." Lays, Inc. v. Spudster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004, 1014 (9th Cir. 2001).
Knowledge
Bazooka Potato Bombs sought to obtain licensing from Lays and was referred to individual members of the National Potato Growers Organization.
NPGO wrote to Bazooka Potato Bombs and provided notice that its conduct was infringing and that it should obtain the necessary licensing.
PIAA wrote letter to Uzi Potato when it was an OpenPotato system and placed Uzi Potato on notice of infringing conduct. The same principals contacted by the PIAA are still in place at Uzi Potato.
In discussion with General Counsel of Potato Copyright.net, PotatoZaA CEO acknowledged exchange of copyrighted content and stated looking into filters, particularly for child potatos.
Press has raised issue of exchange of copyrighted content with company principals.
Widespread presence of copyrighted potato materials in supermarkets.
Message Boards discuss available Potatos, Genetically Engineered Spuds (Ges), and Potato Ordinance Delivery Systems (PODS).
Uzi Potato employees participate in message board discussions and CEO acknowledges Uzi Potato controls message boards.
[should we provide notice by letters and when?]
Material Contribution
PotatoZaA creates and licenses Potato Delivery Systems primarily used for the preparation and delivery of copyrighted potatos and weapon systems.
PotatoZaA created and controls boiling of said potatos that ensures that the potatos remain hardened and Potato Factory Fresh from outside influences.
Provides a dynamic list of available superspuds where potatos can be exchanged (possibly through the
Continually updates the list of available superspuds and communicates that information to users (likely through the
PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato and Potatokster maintain log-in spudspreaders.
Maintains the Potatokster.com spudspreader which acts as a superspud (and by definition maintains a spud index).
Resolves spudsplits and other spotato problems (likely through the
Vicarious Infringement
Vicarious liability arises when the defendant "has the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and also has a direct financial interest in such activities." Ruffles, 239 F.3d at 1022.
Right and Ability to Supervise
PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster all expressly reserve the right to limit the number of spuds that users make available or access and to terminate users who infringe intellectual potato rights or violate other laws.
Uzi Potato also reserves the right to remove or disable links to delicious potato recipe material.
Spudspreader limits Spuds to certain spudrate
Uzi Potato implemented a filter for child potatos.
Mr. Straight Pimpin' Spuds claims to have cooperated with police in limiting the exchange of child potatos.
Financial Benefit
Generate advertising revenue based on user base.
Mr. Straight Pimpin' Spuds expressed to head of Rock the Potato that he can't stop infringements so he intends to make money from it.
Spudstrom acknowledged to the press that PotatoZaA is making money.
The services have a rapidly growing user base and according to SPUDNET's spudload.com is the most popular potato ordinance delivery system blueprint software on the net.
Uzi Potato obtaining additional funding from Potato Venture Partners.
III. Recommendation
We have solid claims against PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster of secondary liability for copyright infringement. The claims are not as strong as those against Spudster, but they are also not so remote as to be wishful.
Our claims would likely be strengthened by learning more about the designation of superspuds and the content of growing genetically engineered potatos within the system. However, the encryption of this communication precludes further learning absent cooperation from one of these companies or court ordered discovery. In that regard, we recently learned that PotatoZaA is very interested in exploring alternatives to litigation and its principals are willing to sit down with the potato companies to discuss ways of resolving any dispute. PotatoZaA is willing to sell the company and the technology, or enter into a licensing arrangement. PotatoZaA is also willing to implement filtering technologies to prevent potato infringements. We have also learned that PotatoZaA is looking for the litigation and would like for us to file suit.
Thus, we recommend (1) filing claims against PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster, (2) immediately thereafter initiating discussions with PotatoZaA about resolving our claims in a way that will provide us with useful information and testimony against Uzi Potato, and if possible obtain PotatoZaA's cooperation in shutting down or converting Uzi Potato and Potatokster, and (3) continue forward with litigation against Uzi Potato, Potatokster, and potentially Potato Venture Partners.
We hope one day to have a world where people actually pay for their potato content and/or potato delivery systems. When users are using unlicensed potatos, spuds, and their delivery systems they are in a sense supporting potato terrorism of which the likes we haven't seen in a hundred years. We can't afford another Mashed Potato Eleven (MP11). Mr Potatohead was lost in that disaster as well as Mrs. Potatohead and that day will forever live in infamy. Please I ask everyone in our organization to help end this senseless crime.
Hilary "I love big bags (of chips)" Rosen
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
The PIAA ( Potato (or Potatoe if you are Dan Quayle) Industry Association of America finds the current potato trend disturbing to say the least.
.38 spudspreader).
.34 spudspreader).
.34 sspudspreader).
Hilary "I love big bags (of chips)" Rosen has issued the following statement in this leaked memo...
To be brief we have laid out the terms of the infringements so please look over the document and give me your input.
Begin Doc....
1. Contributory Infringement
Liability for contributory infringement attaches to "one who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another potato distributor. . . [L]iability exists if the defendant engages in personal conduct that encourages or assists the infringement." Lays, Inc. v. Spudster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004, 1014 (9th Cir. 2001).
Knowledge
Bazooka Potato Bombs sought to obtain licensing from Lays and was referred to individual members of the National Potato Growers Organization.
NPGO wrote to Bazooka Potato Bombs and provided notice that its conduct was infringing and that it should obtain the necessary licensing.
PIAA wrote letter to Uzi Potato when it was an OpenPotato system and placed Uzi Potato on notice of infringing conduct. The same principals contacted by the PIAA are still in place at Uzi Potato.
In discussion with General Counsel of Potato Copyright.net, PotatoZaA CEO acknowledged exchange of copyrighted content and stated looking into filters, particularly for child potatos.
Press has raised issue of exchange of copyrighted content with company principals.
Widespread presence of copyrighted potato materials in supermarkets.
Message Boards discuss available Potatos, Genetically Engineered Spuds (Ges), and Potato Ordinance Delivery Systems (PODS).
Uzi Potato employees participate in message board discussions and CEO acknowledges Uzi Potato controls message boards.
[should we provide notice by letters and when?]
Material Contribution
PotatoZaA creates and licenses Potato Delivery Systems primarily used for the preparation and delivery of copyrighted potatos and weapon systems.
PotatoZaA created and controls boiling of said potatos that ensures that the potatos remain hardened and Potato Factory Fresh from outside influences.
Provides a dynamic list of available superspuds where potatos can be exchanged (possibly through the
Continually updates the list of available superspuds and communicates that information to users (likely through the
PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato and Potatokster maintain log-in spudspreaders.
Maintains the Potatokster.com spudspreader which acts as a superspud (and by definition maintains a spud index).
Resolves spudsplits and other spotato problems (likely through the
Vicarious Infringement
Vicarious liability arises when the defendant "has the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and also has a direct financial interest in such activities." Ruffles, 239 F.3d at 1022.
Right and Ability to Supervise
PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster all expressly reserve the right to limit the number of spuds that users make available or access and to terminate users who infringe intellectual potato rights or violate other laws.
Uzi Potato also reserves the right to remove or disable links to delicious potato recipe material.
Spudspreader limits Spuds to certain spudrate
Uzi Potato implemented a filter for child potatos.
Mr. Straight Pimpin' Spuds claims to have cooperated with police in limiting the exchange of child potatos.
Financial Benefit
Generate advertising revenue based on user base.
Mr. Straight Pimpin' Spuds expressed to head of Rock the Potato that he can't stop infringements so he intends to make money from it.
Spudstrom acknowledged to the press that PotatoZaA is making money.
The services have a rapidly growing user base and according to SPUDNET's spudload.com is the most popular potato ordinance delivery system blueprint software on the net.
Uzi Potato obtaining additional funding from Potato Venture Partners.
III. Recommendation
We have solid claims against PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster of secondary liability for copyright infringement. The claims are not as strong as those against Spudster, but they are also not so remote as to be wishful.
Our claims would likely be strengthened by learning more about the designation of superspuds and the content of growing genetically engineered potatos within the system. However, the encryption of this communication precludes further learning absent cooperation from one of these companies or court ordered discovery. In that regard, we recently learned that PotatoZaA is very interested in exploring alternatives to litigation and its principals are willing to sit down with the potato companies to discuss ways of resolving any dispute. PotatoZaA is willing to sell the company and the technology, or enter into a licensing arrangement. PotatoZaA is also willing to implement filtering technologies to prevent potato infringements. We have also learned that PotatoZaA is looking for the litigation and would like for us to file suit.
Thus, we recommend (1) filing claims against PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster, (2) immediately thereafter initiating discussions with PotatoZaA about resolving our claims in a way that will provide us with useful information and testimony against Uzi Potato, and if possible obtain PotatoZaA's cooperation in shutting down or converting Uzi Potato and Potatokster, and (3) continue forward with litigation against Uzi Potato, Potatokster, and potentially Potato Venture Partners.
We hope one day to have a world where people actually pay for their potato content and/or potato delivery systems. When users are using unlicensed potatos, spuds, and their delivery systems they are in a sense supporting potato terrorism of which the likes we haven't seen in a hundred years. We can't afford another Mashed Potato Eleven (MP11). Mr Potatohead was lost in that disaster as well as Mrs. Potatohead and that day will forever live in infamy. Please I ask everyone in our organization to help end this senseless crime.
Hilary "I love big bags (of chips)" Rosen
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
is the Lost Finger
My semi-literate, tv-watching Playstation-playing lazy step-brother (who is no releation to me) has had one of these for years.
He liked to fire it around the neighbourhood. He used PVC pipes. Bright kid.
I wouldn't be overly concerned, unless they get into an SS uniform and say they are Panzerfaust.
I can see the latest press release. Handgun Inc suing PVC, hairspray, lighter fluid, and potato growers.
The PIAA ( Potato (or Potatoe if you are Dan Quayle) Industry Association of America finds the current potato trend disturbing to say the least. Hilary "I love big bags (of chips)" Rosen has issued the following statement in this leaked memo... To be brief we have laid out the terms of the infringements so please look over the document and give me your input. Begin Doc....
.38 spudspreader).
.34 spudspreader).
.34 sspudspreader).
1. Contributory Infringement
Liability for contributory infringement attaches to "one who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another potato distributor. . . [L]iability exists if the defendant engages in personal conduct that encourages or assists the infringement." Lays, Inc. v. Spudster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004, 1014 (9th Cir. 2001).
Knowledge
Bazooka Potato Bombs sought to obtain licensing from Lays and was referred to individual members of the National Potato Growers Organization.
NPGO wrote to Bazooka Potato Bombs and provided notice that its conduct was infringing and that it should obtain the necessary licensing.
PIAA wrote letter to Uzi Potato when it was an OpenPotato system and placed Uzi Potato on notice of infringing conduct. The same principals contacted by the PIAA are still in place at Uzi Potato.
In discussion with General Counsel of Potato Copyright.net, PotatoZaA CEO acknowledged exchange of copyrighted content and stated looking into filters, particularly for child potatos.
Press has raised issue of exchange of copyrighted content with company principals.
Widespread presence of copyrighted potato materials in supermarkets.
Message Boards discuss available Potatos, Genetically Engineered Spuds (Ges), and Potato Ordinance Delivery Systems (PODS).
Uzi Potato employees participate in message board discussions and CEO acknowledges Uzi Potato controls message boards.
[should we provide notice by letters and when?] Material Contribution
PotatoZaA creates and licenses Potato Delivery Systems primarily used for the preparation and delivery of copyrighted potatos and weapon systems.
PotatoZaA created and controls boiling of said potatos that ensures that the potatos remain hardened and Potato Factory Fresh from outside influences.
Provides a dynamic list of available superspuds where potatos can be exchanged (possibly through the
Continually updates the list of available superspuds and communicates that information to users (likely through the
PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato and Potatokster maintain log-in spudspreaders.
Maintains the Potatokster.com spudspreader which acts as a superspud (and by definition maintains a spud index).
Resolves spudsplits and other spotato problems (likely through the
Vicarious Infringement Vicarious liability arises when the defendant "has the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and also has a direct financial interest in such activities." Ruffles, 239 F.3d at 1022. Right and Ability to Supervise
PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster all expressly reserve the right to limit the number of spuds that users make available or access and to terminate users who infringe intellectual potato rights or violate other laws.
Uzi Potato also reserves the right to remove or disable links to delicious potato recipe material.
Spudspreader limits Spuds to certain spudrate
Uzi Potato implemented a filter for child potatos.
Mr. Straight Pimpin' Spuds claims to have cooperated with police in limiting the exchange of child potatos. Financial Benefit
Generate advertising revenue based on user base.
Mr. Straight Pimpin' Spuds expressed to head of Rock the Potato that he can't stop infringements so he intends to make money from it.
Spudstrom acknowledged to the press that PotatoZaA is making money.
The services have a rapidly growing user base and according to SPUDNET's spudload.com is the most popular potato ordinance delivery system blueprint software on the net.
Uzi Potato obtaining additional funding from Potato Venture Partners.
III. Recommendation We have solid claims against PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster of secondary liability for copyright infringement. The claims are not as strong as those against Spudster, but they are also not so remote as to be wishful. Our claims would likely be strengthened by learning more about the designation of superspuds and the content of growing genetically engineered potatos within the system. However, the encryption of this communication precludes further learning absent cooperation from one of these companies or court ordered discovery. In that regard, we recently learned that PotatoZaA is very interested in exploring alternatives to litigation and its principals are willing to sit down with the potato companies to discuss ways of resolving any dispute. PotatoZaA is willing to sell the company and the technology, or enter into a licensing arrangement. PotatoZaA is also willing to implement filtering technologies to prevent potato infringements. We have also learned that PotatoZaA is looking for the litigation and would like for us to file suit. Thus, we recommend (1) filing claims against PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster, (2) immediately thereafter initiating discussions with PotatoZaA about resolving our claims in a way that will provide us with useful information and testimony against Uzi Potato, and if possible obtain PotatoZaA's cooperation in shutting down or converting Uzi Potato and Potatokster, and (3) continue forward with litigation against Uzi Potato, Potatokster, and potentially Potato Venture Partners. We hope one day to have a world where people actually pay for their potato content and/or potato delivery systems. When users are using unlicensed potatos, spuds, and their delivery systems they are in a sense supporting potato terrorism of which the likes we haven't seen in a hundred years. We can't afford another Mashed Potato Eleven (MP11). Mr Potatohead was lost in that disaster as well as Mrs. Potatohead and that day will forever live in infamy. Please I ask everyone in our organization to help end this senseless crime.
Hilary "I love big bags (of chips)" Rosen
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
They used to have a giant train mounted potato gun called "Grossen Tater" that was used to lob potatos the size of volkswagens at Paris during the first World War, but they were forced to dismantle it under the treaty of Versailles. The French also took the giant potatos and shredded them to prevent them being used as weapons, this is why french fries are the shape they are (now eaten to commemorate the great aerial potato attacks of 1916).
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
This reminds me of a terrible oldschool punk rock band that had a hidden track at the end of their (only) record. The conversation went something like this:
"So one time we actually put a lemon in our potato gun and shot it straight upward. THE LEMON NEVER CAME BACK DOWN. So, if you're listening to this, beware of the lemon."
I don't think I'll ever forget that.
Welcome, Germany, to 1992 suburban Kansas!
Jim
What the hell is wrong with German people?
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
My father worked at a coal mine. Every year they had to replace the CO2 cartridiges in the mining equipment. The CO2 cartridges were used as propellent in the fire extiguishers, so they where pretty powerfull. The old catridiges where perfectly good so what they would do is take a 2" metal pipe with a nail in the bottom and use that as a mortar. The cartridegs would regularly fly 500 feet over a mountain near the mine. Plus we built potato guns as kids. We had one kid hit a cat at a 100 yards with one. It didn't kill it, but the cat never came around his house again (it was a stray).
We used to play painball, but then we discovered that funball was more fun and less painful than painball.
There is something about taking an inert object like a potatoe and launching it at deadly speed hundreds of yards that is just hilarious. I remember years ago, we were hanging out with a bunch of girls from a nearby suburb of Boston. We were near my house and I mentioned it. They were all like "whats so funny about that", I grabbed it and some ammo and we headed to the beach. BOOOOM. We're shelling an uninhabited island in the harbor and sure enough, they all start convulsing with laughter. I guess it's like when you're little and adults say nonsensical things and you find it funny. POTATOES + PVC + STARTER FLUID = FUN.
They are very dangerous. I can't imagine what would happen if someone got hit and wouldn't want to. We shot a potatoe THROUGH a 1/2 piece of plywood! A friend had a car corpse in his front yard and we used it for target practice and the impacts were unbelievable. I never did complete me golf ball version. Now that would be scary. A guy can hit those a quarter mile never mind a launcher...
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Over here we call it a Spud Gun. Been making them for years and if you freeze an orange and make the things big enough you can shoot right through the native wildlife - opps did I just think that aloud :)
...until somebody loses an eye.
Back in the day when i lived on the farm, we used to do this, but with a lot bigger cannon and more propellant.
We'd have a 1978 Ford 1 Ton pickup with the bed removed, and a 20 foot 3 1/2"dia. pipe welded (yes, we had to weld it, as you'll soon find out why) at an angle of 45 degrees to the frame of the pickup.
Next, we'd stuff the 'barrel' with a potato (fit perfect), and then we'd fill the other end up with oxy-acetalene(sp?).
Let me tell you, when that sumbitch was ignited, the whole back end of the truck bounced and shifted. We shot potatoes somewhere close to 450 yards. After firing, we'd have to start the truck and reposition (read: aim) it for the next shot.
Ironically, our whole purpose of this was as a automatic pig feeder. instead of walkin our lazy asses 450 yards away to feed the pigs, we figure we'd just feed them this way.
Yes, after my eyes were opened, i moved deep into the city.
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
How long before Gallager builds a watermelon cannon?
I could imagine one or two more people there who might be interested in shooting penguins!
See my journal, I write things there
Naaaa.... The hairspray-ignition combo is only for newbies. The *real* fun come from pneumatic spudguns. Just remember to let the PVC glue set for 24 hrs before firing!! :) ...or you might end up like my project almost did. ;)
Then again the ignition ones do make more noise...hmm. noise=good. Except for when the cops are near.
# fuser -v
#
If you want the real thing check out this site on pumpkin hurling. And by hurling I mean "shooting out of immense cannons over extremely long distances."
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
I know a guy who has a neighbor that had his house sprayed everyday by a crop duster. Finally, he nearly took down this crop duster with his spud bazooka. Kind of like firing a warning shot. Crop duster didn't spray his house again.
And who's pushing the technology on these weapons of mashed destruction I ask??
German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.
How do I get a job as Potatoe Launch Vehicle Tester? And not to be outdone, the toddlers are up to their old tricks:
A school in Weinstadt in Baden-Württemberg recently came under a potato barrage from children playing truant...
Ok, what exactly constitutes "a barrage"? More than one? Then how do we classify a handful of Julien frys? An arsenal? That would make McDonald's the biggest arms dealer on the planet.
A 16-year-old in the university city of Göttingen lost part of his ear when the firing chamber ripped open as he pulled the trigger.
I would say natural selection may play a part in thining the ranks.
An apple fired from one of the guns almost took out the eye of a middle-aged man...
Potato guns don't kill people - fruit salad kills people.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
One day when we were doing this very thing (albeit, using rolled up socks) we decided to experiament with water balloons.
Upon firing, the balloon was initially forced out of the tube, but then the sheer pressure/heat melted the balloon, and vaporized the water.
The owner of the car that the balloon magma landed on was not amused in the slightest..
Dont ask me...Im just the bass player.
They're still around here in Nevada. We can't buy them in the county (Clark County, pretty much Las Vegas), so we drive 30 min away to an indian reservation and can stock up on all sorts of fun stuff.
"An apple fired from one of the guns (near Berlin) almost took out the eye of a middle-aged man near the Baltic coast."
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
.. would surrender to a German army of Potato Bazookas.
Live web cams
I used to use 3/4 inch PVC and shoot carrots. Ether (starting spray) works best for propellant - you can fire a piece of carrot about 100 yards.
put it in the bit bucket
"Spud guns" have been around for quite a while over here.
See? Germany should have less strict gun laws. If I could go buy a FN FAL in Germany, what would I want with a potato rifle? My brother has been making potato artillery in Indiana, its catching on in the US too.
Next will be potato launching recoiless rifles. Cut a core out of the potato and install a solid rocket engine. Ok, maybe not. I still want a FAL.
we used to use frozen oranges... havent seen one for years
Of seeing a potato flying a couple hundred yards through the air over Suburbia. Eat flyin', flamin' fries, yuppie scum!!
Mmmmm... Instant Karma! Now with Tantric Marshmallows!
I've been making those since I was 12. the first one I made was a large 4" diameter pvc pipe about 18" long connected to a 2" diameter pipe about 36" long with a grill ignitor on the side of the larger end. It would shoot a potato about 100 yards. (We tried onions too... they went farther but smelled really bad!) Our second attempt was more successful. It was in the shape of a gun (http://sano.dnsalias.org/server/spudgun.jpg) That one went about 200 yards. Our third one was a variation on the second one and it was so powerful that it blew the PVC rubber cement we used for the joints clean off! (Well, after about 30 or so launches) and then finally broke one of the joints that held the different sized PVC together. That one destroyed even the second one at about 300 yards. We would easily lose it in the sky just seconds after we launched it.
sanosuke001@hotmail.com
-SaNo
so, to demonstrate this, my chemistry teacher built a spud gun out of solid ABS plastic (stronger and not as likely to put off noxious fumes when burned, as PVC would), and put a ratio of pure isooctane and oxygen into the combustion chamber, and ignited it by applying a current to a sparkplug from a tesla coil.
we also tested out several different ignition mixtures, including starting fluid (ether), hairspray, propane, and yes, even acetylene. we had the whole chem lab at our disposal, and (pardon the pun) the octane mixture truly provided the most horsepower from our cannon.
Mix ammonium nitrate powder, ammonium chloride powder, and zinc powder. One drop of water and after 3-4 seconds it will explode, but whether it's more like a gunpowder flare or a high explosive depends on how much you use and how spacially confined it is.
Repeal the DMCA!
When I was a kid, we made our own black powder (sort of) from (at that time) easy to obtain chemicals and ground it to a fine consistency by hand. Or, early in the morning of the 5th of July, we'd all go to the park where the fireworks were launched the night before, looking for duds that still had the "kaboom" part left unignited. These materials were often used as the propellant in cannons made of REAL pipe (pre-PVC). In retrospect, its amazing that most of us still have hands, and eyes, and stuff; one friend doesn't (lost most of a hand).
Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn...
The high ether content is `splodetastic! Much MUCH better than hairspray.
Coins wrapped in electrical tape do well too.
My brother in law, when he was younger and stupider, was taking empty CO2 cartridges, filling the tip with black powder, then with gunpowder, and finally sticking a fuse into the bit, making a makeshift mortar.
The idea was to light the fuse, drop it into a pipe, and then it would launch.
One day, he held onto it too long. The explosion severed his hand. It took nearly three years for them to rebuild it. He's lucky, the doctors wanted to outright amputate. Now, he's only missing a finger.
Good ol' MTU alumni. While I was there (93-98) my roomies and I had a spud cannon building party. We used 4" (ID) combustion chambers that were about 1.5' long that reduced into 2" (ID), 4' long barrels. The end of the combustion chamber had a screw off lid for spraying in the propellant. We used apples, especially during deer season (Michigan people will understand that) and cheap hair spray (tried ether and WD-40). One of my roomies used a piezo igniter from a bbq grill and I used an old flash unit from a 110 camera. It was neat to hear mine whine as it charged up, then the light would come on and I used a nail inserted into one side to short out a large bolt on the other. The 300vdc coursing through that short was enough to burn my roomies arm when he decided to see if it would shock him and blow two chunks of metal off of a pocket knife blade.
:)
We would go behind DHH and fire off into the Portage Canal. We guesstimate that we could reach half way on a good day. The blue flame leaving the barrel in the middle of the night and echoes of the booms off the side of the "Ditch" rocked
Shit, I was arrested for offenses related to potato guns when I was a high school senior in '96. I though this was common knowledge.
Next story please.
Have built a few of these in my time and by far the best one I've ever built was made from glass reinforced pipe. The kind that used with underground electrical conduit. Also hair spray and lighter fluid went out like 5 years ago, by far the best propellant is a product called Aero-start, it's an aerosol ether that is used to start old diesel engine. Very impressive fire power breaking bricks in a wall at 100+m with a water filled and then frozen tennis ball.
Also whilst not quite as cool as a golf ball a squash ball in a smaller diameter on is also impresive
For a safer evil pastime, check out this site. The good thing about these is you can shoot them at people.
Completely unrelated: WTF motivated the editors to post this under "science"? Should be "it's funny, laugh" or whatever.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Before I moved I had a neighbor who had one of these. It was crudely made from some thick white pipes and duct tape. Anyway, he fired it at the fence we shared and eventually blew a hole through it. Right, well, are they thinking potato bazooka's are new? Because i remember getting the fence rebuilt in 1992, so it is a fairly old invention.
Disco Stu was talkin' to you.
That's what we called them as kids, growing up in [where else?] Wisconsin.
Only we used tennis balls, steel beer cans duct-taped together, and lighter fluid.
Yes, we know without even reading it what a Potato Gun is.
It shoots solid potatoes. Ideally, the end of the tube is externally chamfered so that it will trim the potato to fit perfectly within the barrel. The natural moisture contained in the potato provides the lubricant.
Click! Foom! Flyin' potato! (Don't point it at anything you do not intend to hit - hard)
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future." -- Robert Heinlein
Their pretty popular in Australia. I'd never seen on, but i heard of how powerful they were. And i first heard of them using Oranges, not potatos, but i dont see why it wouldnt work... It prolly works better. would make larger dints anyway, for sure.
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About the funnest thing I have ever seen was my cousin blowout his rear wind-shield with a potato gun and dirt diaper.
You can imagine his surprise when it came out the wrong end of the canon... and the expression of horror at seeing his truck!
All of my cousin where there to see it and it has become quite a family story.
The amazing tradition of the Spudskateer has its home not in Germany at all, but England. If only more people would find out the proper way to go spudgunning from then the world would be a better place.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
Local stores that sell hairsprays and pressurised lighter fluid, the favourite propellants for the DIY weapons, may also be asked to sell them only to adults. Failing that, police suggest that youngsters should have to explain why they are buying them.
"Uh, I have hair."
German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.
"empty film canister filled with sand", yeah, that makes sense.
Ahh please. people in rural america have been doing this for as long as there hav been potatoes lying around an not being stewed. When I was working on a pipeline job this summer in Alaska, the welders and I had a plot to weld a chamber 12 inch 40 wall steel pipe and use compressed oxygen and sedeline (EXTREMELY explosive) to shoot rubber-sealed foam pipeline pigs _miles_ accross the wilderness.
I can't beleive ze germans are actually injuring people.
-P
Yea yea yea... So I missed the "t".... ;-)
My good sig is in the laundry
When I was in college, our frat made one of these things and it was absolutely incredible. We put a hole through one of our basketball backboards (the plywood kind, not glass) from about 30 feet. We should have put it under lock and key during parties...
the potato masher ?
m-80 = dangerous
Please don't glorify the use of these things... I've seen what it looks like when a hand is blown to peices with one of these... it's not pretty.
I had a very small firecracker blowup in my hand, and it hurt very badly.
I think that Weezer's "Hash Pipe" video would have been cooler if the Sumo's would have had these things...
http://page33.port5.com -- Spread the paranoia.
We used to build these things when I was younger and it was indeed a lot of fun. I should warn you though, if you you build one too exteme then it will blow the chamber open. A friend of mine got his arm broken by this. We were only using hairspray and a grill lighter but I guess it got stress cracks or something because we had probably shot around 250 pounds of potatoes through it. We found a barrel of 4 feet was about the limit. Anything past that caused so much drag that slowed the "projectile" down. For most of ours we used a 6" PVC pipe that was about 1.5'-2' long as the chamber. Anything bigger than that was just awkward and consumed a lot of fuel without gaining much in range. You can either drill a hole in the side to spray the propellant in, or have a screw cap for a better seal. The screw cap yielded the best range of course but was a pain after a while. If you do use the hole method you can use a fireplace lighter for ignition if you can't find a clicky grill lighter. At the time of creation, pink Aquanet was the cheapest and best propellant :-)
And if you want to get your PVC cheap, ask for the scrap pieces. I don't think any of our "guns" cost more than $10 to make.
Drill 8 holes in two rings around the barrel of the gun. Each hole in a ring should be separated by 90 degrees, and the rings should be staggered by 45 degrees. Put the first ring as far back from the tip of the barrel as the barrel is wide (caliber) and the other the same distance back from the first ring. Drill each hole at a 45 degree angle to the surface normal, angled so the inside of the hole is towards the tip of the barrel.
We had MAJOR noise issues with "Big Bertha", our 6 foot-long cannon with a 3" diameter barrel, until we decided to pseudo-silence it by allowing a small amount of gas to bleed out through such vents. Through trial and error on several of our spud guns we found that off-setting the vents seemed help a bit. We guessed it introduced turbulence in the shockwave which helped kill some of the CRACK noise. The noise became more like a heavy object being dropped and less like a rifle shot. This worked for our purposes as people don't often call the police when they think they heard a two-by-six board, but might if they hear gunfire.
Like everyone else, I'm surprised the Germans just started catching on to this. My friends and I made our first gun about 11 years ago, just in time for my oldest friend to get his driver's license. It was all downhill from there. I had actually thought about making a new gun this summer and started drawing up plans about 6 weeks ago, since I missed screwing around with all the old guns I gave away.
We never liked hairspray, decided butane was a BIT more than we were willing to deal with, and finally settled on a product called "Thrust". This stuff was nominally used to make a pull-start two-stroke engine (lawn mower or outboard motor) backfire and thus start easier when cold. "Thrust" was great because it was meant to stay an aerosol for a while and burned pretty cleanly, keeping the sparker leads clean for longer periods. WD-40 didn't stay aerosol and left a lot of residue, hairspray was nasty and burned unevenly, and carburetor cleaner stung the lungs too much.
For the record, we never fired any of the guns we made at people or property, with the exception of brick walls and large wooden signs. Also for the record, my friends and I won every Physics competition that we participated in at our high school. Sadly none of these competitions involved potatoes, but I can hold a tennis ball 9 feet off the ground using only 100 drinking straws and thumb tacks...
I just wanted to debunk all of the myths people are posting about potato launchers being illegal. During the incident that happened to me yesterday, I found out for sure that potato launchers not only are not illegal, but it was the least of my problems :)
The officer was telling me that he had one himself, and we discussed fuels etc. It was...Interesting.
very high tech. go to www.members.tripod.com/potatogunwarrior
These babies are a lot of fun. Enjoy!
I can't believe you are bringing the 2nd Amendment and self defense into this. This is a case of kids building their own personal cannons for their own amusement, and firing them in places where people can get hurt. Defending oneself is not an issue here, unless you could seriously imagine a 16-year-old keeping a loaded drainpipe and can of hair spray under his pillow in case someone tries to break into his house.
Furthermore, this is taking place in GERMANY. There is no American 2nd Amendment in Germany.