Picture this: The wind gently brushes the grassy turf of a pine-surrounded meadow. A hawk floats serenely across the sky. The breeze dies down and all is silent. Then without any warning there is a faint click and instantly the serenity is shattered with a deafening blast as an unfortunate tuber is launched across the meadow scaring the living daylights out of the surrounding wildlife. Anyone that has tried it knows the sheer thrill of operating a spud gun and the thrill is even better if you've made your very own.
One thing that has kind of bothered me with the whole world of spud chucking is the waste. Potatoes are food and as such should be eaten (I'm Irish what can I say) . . . not hurled at breakneck speeds to please the whooping and hollering primates behind its path (yeah I'm one of those too).
I have devised a way to make additional use of dirty paper towels and reduce the waste of potatoes simultaneously . . . behold the duct spud!
Here's me and then a friend of mine using it:
Not bad considering it's quite windy!
One thing that has kind of bothered me with the whole world of spud chucking is the waste. Potatoes are food and as such should be eaten (I'm Irish what can I say) . . . not hurled at breakneck speeds to please the whooping and hollering primates behind its path (yeah I'm one of those too).
I have devised a way to make additional use of dirty paper towels and reduce the waste of potatoes simultaneously . . . behold the duct spud!
Here's me and then a friend of mine using it:
Not bad considering it's quite windy!
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Signing UpStep 1: Materials
Okay obviously there's the whole danger thing of operating a spud gun and depending on where you are there are legality issues as well. It's YOUR responsibility not mine to keep your hide intact and yourself out of jail.
Right so here's what you're going to need to make these:
That's it! Pretty simple huh?
Right so here's what you're going to need to make these:
- old dirty paper towels (preferably not wet and definitely not having anything like linseed oil which is prone to spontaneous combustion . . . .that would be BAD)
- a roll of duct tape
- orange (or any color that stands out from your surroundings) Extruded plastic flagging tape. The kind you see tied to wooden sticks around construction sites. (i bought mine from home depot it's kept near their caution tape)
- (optional: will make for better range due to increased momentum) a smooth but dense rock that fits, with plenty of room, inside your spud gun's barrel (so if you have a 1.5 inch inner diam barrel I'd suggest no bigger than an inch in diameter and a couple of inches in length
- Paper towel -$0.00 : Should never be short of dirty paper towels so I'll consider that cost negligible
- Duct Tape - $0.10 : the whole roll costs only so the 3 or so feet you'll need come to this amount
- Flagging tape - $0.30 : 300 feet cost less than $2 and you need only 6 inches
- Rock - $0.00 : besides being optional the earth is practically made of these . . .if you can't find one the see an optometrist and a neurologist for poor eyesight and/or lack of feeling.
That's it! Pretty simple huh?
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this is a method used way back in the 1700's when bullets were odly shaped all the time and so cotton was inserted to fill up that extra space allowing a full sized blast regardless of size.
i do this on my spud gun to fire lumps of plasticene coverd by glad wrap, or odly shaped things like lego men, also , due to the rapid decompression of the cotton, it basically disperses itself in the air like a hand full of hair thrown in the wind, so theres no need to kleen up after wards, yay
i just created a kind of re-usable ammo for my spud gun , the barrel is about 4cm(allitle over an inch )wide, but it should work for smaller ones.
this is recomended for those of you using pvc pipes
get a size of pvc pipe 1 size smaller than what you have now, there should be only around 5mm of space between outside of the small pipe and inside of the larger pipe when the small is inside the large (barrel).
get some kind of glue, i use hotmelt glue, and glue some foam sheet around a 1.5inch cut of the pipe, 1 layer is all you need, the foam sheet is avalible at all craft and hobby stores, and also supermarkets and anywhere that sells the "kool kids brand" of cheap toys and breakable thingys.
wrap a few layers of duck tape around the pipe now wraped with 1 layer of foam, until it almost fits snuggly inside you barrel (aka the larger pipe)
then get some gas pipeing tape, this stuff is basicaly soft, easily compressed, plasticene like , soft tape, it is not sticky, its also called thread tape for jamming anything that is metal or plasic that screws in somewhere.
wrap this stuff around the front of the ammo, until its made a high enough to only just get jammed into your barrel. next get some vaselene, or some other lubricant (as the tape is rubbery), preferably soap from a bar (not liquid), then wet the soap, or smear the vaselene, onto the threading tape, then insert into your barrel.
you should be able to blow it outwith difficulty, if so, then its perfect, fill the ammo with whatever you want, be it lead to mud, you can change the weight and center of gravity.
personaly i use a capasitor, that is charged, so i cna shoot it at someone, then it electrocutes them on impact, the high voltage given out (300v from camera cap), will make it hang on like a magnet for the 2 seconds it takes to discharge)
i will make this into a instructable later, but as re-usable ammo for mini spud guns,
this wont work for potato launchers that dont require a totaly airtight barrel to fire, well it will, but theres no real point, this is for mini spud guns