how did you get into cannons?

[Benny]

how did you get into cannons?, i got into cannons because i always wanted an airgun, but wasnt allowed so me and my dad went and spent $20 on sch 80 fittings and made a small cannon, then i looked on the internet to see if anyone else had made somethind similar and found things called spud launchers, pretty good i made my first cannon when i was eight.

[Atlantis]

I was with my friend and I was talking with her dad, he was telling us about all the funny things he did with his friend, he's british by the way, I noticed a piece of PVC in the corner and asked him if he did anything stupid with it, surely enough he did. He helped me build my first cannon, we also disproved the, "let the glue dry for 24 hours" concept, TEN MINUTES, went by and it worked, It was so inspiring seeing the chamber glow and hear the loud crack and watch several branches fall off a tree. I later found out that I have a knack for figuring things out, hence my many designs in the theories section. This site gives me a reason to be smart, being smart as a teenager doesn't mean anything anymore. Oh well. It's good to have an inspiration.

[)DEMON(]

well, i always liked building stuff or modifying stuff,its what i do with everything and i love weapons,i build them ,buy them, and make them out of stuff i find lying around.i always wanted a paintball gun but have never really had the money to buy one, so i was looking on the internet for a 'how to' and i came across spudfiles and i joined as soon as i could.

[Andrew52]

well my gandpa showed me a mini marshmellow gun so me and my frined s made a bunch so one night we hooked it upp to one of those pump up rocket things and we shot a mini marshmallow through a saturday newspaper then my frinds step dad like a year later helped us build a basic 4" to 2" abs spudgun i looked stuff up on th net go into pneaumatics and i've been hooked ever since

srry bout my grammar and spelling

[Rambo]

I wanted to make a flying ballon so I made my first hidrogen machine.It gives H2 and O2.I filled kinder supprise cans with the mix and ignited them with a coil from an old moscvich 1360.I discovered that butane and air works too and made my first mini film can pistol.

[jrrdw]

My older brothers took a nerf basketball and dunked it id gasoline stuk it on a stick lit it on fire and took a baseball bat and hit it into the corn field, well we got a visit from the fire department, and the fire marshal,(he was not happy). Then one of thier older friends told us how to duct tape tennis ball cans together, burry it in the ground about half way, squirt lighter fluid into it, drop a tennis ball in, light a match and throw it in and waalaa, our 1st cannon! The tennis ball came out on fire but went out half way through flight. We got about 100 yards out of it. Not bad for poor boys back in the early 70's.

[saladtossser]

aaron cake
http://www.aaroncake.net/spuds/index.asp

i went there for some electronic circuits
and i made a awesome phone tap by modifing one of his plans

[taterjim]

My wifes nephew told me one day last year about this time that he a nd his brothers used to have a spud gun. What is a spud gun?, I never heard that one before.
While traveling through Missouri I found one a a junk,flea mkt type place so I bought it. It was not a very good one ,It had a 2' by 3" chamber and only a two ft. barrel, It sounded so funny when it was fired ,and all my neighbors were amused by it.
I then began to look for spud gun info on the internet ,and then I built much better cannons with what I had learned .
Of course I also had to try some pneumatic cannons as well.
I have about ten cannons at this time.

[rna_duelers]

Well i saw my uncle and his mates make a spudcannon about 5 years ago and i used it and we had alot of fun with it and i was hooked!so i was looking on the net and i found http://www.xinvetions.com(crappy pay for plans site)and i saw his mini pneumatic paintball gun and i wanted one!So by looking at the pics i figured it out,it was very simple ball valve which i foun in our shed a piece of 1/2 pipe and a coke bottle and a schradder valve and i remeber the first time i had it i shot my friend in the belly with a grape by accident it left a tinny red mark so of course i wanted more power so i got bigger valve and bigger barrel then found this site and made my first modded sprinkler then it was onto diagphrams.

Then my first combustion because i live in urban areas so combustion was 2 loud for my dad to let me use it,but i did a few times and shot holes in our fence...haha dad wasnt happy but he liked it so he baught me bags of potatoes and we went out bush and had some fun,but it was all DWV and the end cap blew off i didnt think i needed pressure pipe for combustion but i do now.

[shockwave]

I allways wanted an airgun as well and wasn't allowed. I remember I told my woodwork teacher at school that I was gonna build an airgun. She got realy mad and told me it was illegal and that I couldn't do that in school. A couple of years later me and my friend built a deodorant combustion potato gun. It was awesome and I didn't want no comertial airgun anymore 8) (that is limited to 10J output). Recently I started to build pneumatic guns and so far I built three of them. Next I guess I will explore the world of hybrid cannons and break the sound barrier with a golf ball 8)

[Jakal444]

I was at the hardware store where I saw some cool PVC pipe and fittings, had the idea for a simple cannon, and made a working prototype the very same day!
After that I went online and found the "how not to build an aircannon" page and I was hooked. After that I built a decent pneumatic and a couple of combustion minis and the rest is history!
I don't think I will explore the world of Hybrids though, a bit too risky for me.
But I am going to build a piston cannon sometime however first things first, I have to find myself a sprinkler valve and make a cannon with it.

[shockwave]

Actualy I had a sprinkler valve on my first gun and I'm rather dissapointed with its performance. Maybe you'll get good performance if you mod it, never tried. My recent gun is built after plans and ideas found here: http://galfisk.kaaven.net/gallery/thumb ... p?album=14 and it realy kicks ass. Piston is the key to success. It took me about two days of intence searcing for parts and building to put it together, but im realy glad with the result. I'll post some pics later when I get a chance to test it in the forest.. this thing is loud without any ammo loaded and I can imagine how loud it will be with ammo so I don't wanna test it in my apartment I havent shot any shots at over 50psi, but at 50 it has about the same power as my ball valve gun with 120psi!

[Jakal444]

Interesting, but anyway my next cannon is not going to be a "performance" cannon, its a large bore cannon to fire water balloons/tennis balls (I'll start a topic when im set) so I think that a 1 inch sprinkler is better than a piston since the trigger must be on the outside.

[rna_duelers]

A piston of nearly any type or size has better flow then a sprinkler,and you can have a trigger on the out side of a piston cannon and most large piston cannons use a sprinkler valve to vent.

[sgort87]

Yeah I just get bored in the summer so I indulge in as much physics-related activity as possible. Spud guns are one of them. I think it was sparked from some video of an ABS combustion shattering on someone in winter. I just decided after seeing the video that I should make one - or 30...