Water guns for the US armed forces

[btrettel]

As some of you know, I run a website about water guns with a focus on building them. Around this time of the year I start getting emails from members US armed forces stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The summer is hot and they need something to both have fun and keep cool.

I want to help them, but I'm not made of money. Water gun forums also are very slow until the summer, so there's little interest in helping those in need at the moment. This is where I believe the spudding community could come in.

Many people here probably have a few water guns they don't have any use for. If so and you'd like to send them to someone, let me know by PM, email, or whatever.

Perhaps even more people here could build a water gun for these folks. If so, take a look at what's been done and/or make your own design, test it, and get in contact with me. The designs are fairly similar to spud gun designs, so I don't imagine anyone who has built a pneumatic spud gun will have any difficulty building a water gun.

You can email me at ben@sscentral.org . If you email me, I'll simply send you the contact details of the soldier who email me and you two can figure everything out from there.

[Demon]

If i understand, you think we should send some pvc pipes assembled to the us forces ( or canadian ) for free? i dont think a lot of people will do that.

[btrettel]

"PVC pipes assembled?" Depends on what they are assembled into.

Many people obviously are not required to make this a success. If I can find 5 people willing to send anything that's a big success in my opinion.

[john bunsenburner]

You could send them plans to make their own water guns fro scrap they find there, that is if they have the time/nerve to do so...But i am also some what afraid that not too many will send guns which are worth up to 50$ away fro free...

[btrettel]

They know of my website which has many plans. If they could follow them, they would, believe me. I don't know the exact details of the problems, but I'd imagine spending the time to track down the parts and build it is the main problem. These people want something they could pick up for a break, nothing more.

[Demon]

It will cost les to send some super soaker or something, they are 15 $ each and pretty powerful.

[Ragnarok]

Just a suggestion, but have you considered getting on the line to Hasbro directly?

I've seen a lot of news stories where companies have found out their products are wanted by troops in action (for whatever reason) and jumped at the chance to do something.

The thing is, many companies love that kind of publicity, so you might get lucky - even a company that doesn't want to be seen supporting the war likes to be seen to be supporting the troops.
In the end, the worst that could happen is that you try and they say no. Worth a gamble I think, and the pay off could be pretty big.

Again, just a suggestion.

[btrettel]

Good idea. It's worth considering, but there's really no way for me to get in contact with Hasbro aside from through the customer service route, which never goes anywhere in my experience.

I do however have the president of Buzz Bee Toys' email address...

[Daltonultra]

It looks to me that the BuzzBee Toys route is your best bet. I just prowled around Hasbro's site, and while they do seem to do a lot of donations, they have very specific guidelines, and no way to suggest new programs.

[POLAND_SPUD]

@ rag now that was clever

[Biopyro]

Surely the postage would cost almost as much as the cannon itself. I have a good design which costs about £30-£35, but it weighs several kilos.

[covey12]

my dad is the senior chief of the Jacksonville navy base and they use water guns that work pretty good to sink the slugs(new guys) when they have to build a boat and go across the st. johns with what ever they can build out of the scrap airplanes, and fuel tanks.

anyways the guns are just a piece of pipe probably 1.5 in. with a nozzle on one end and on the other an end cap with a hole drilled in it and a rod that has a plunger to push the water through the nozzle. they are really good, and cheap to make, i was thinking of making a gigantic one with like 3in. pipe just to screw around and shoot my brother

[SEAKING9006]

If you wanna get fancy, try and find out what kind of water cannons they use at Shlitterbahn (Oh *@&$, Firefox's spellchecker just killed itself). I went there last year and they had a little ship lloking platform with four water guns on it that fired single bursts of water nearly coherently (if you wated till the barrel overflowed, you got a BIG ball o' water). These get shot at a much larger ship playscape (around two stories high to the very tip, with 3 or 4 levels, this thing was like 1.5 to 2.5 Mc-Donald's playscapes big) that had these simple powered super soaker stream guns. The repeating cannons were obviously pneumatic captive bolt guns, and they were very nice to use. ROF was fairly low, but getting hit by a full-mass water ball is like getting hit by a light medicine ball (and I'm not a tiny guy, either. These things pack some kinetic energy).

[covey12]

If you wanna get fancy, try and find out what kind of water cannons they use at Shlitterbahn (Oh *@&$, Firefox's spellchecker just killed itself). I went there last year and they had a little ship lloking platform with four water guns on it that fired single bursts of water nearly coherently (if you wated till the barrel overflowed, you got a BIG ball o' water). These get shot at a much larger ship playscape (around two stories high to the very tip, with 3 or 4 levels, this thing was like 1.5 to 2.5 Mc-Donald's playscapes big) that had these simple powered super soaker stream guns. The repeating cannons were obviously pneumatic captive bolt guns, and they were very nice to use. ROF was fairly low, but getting hit by a full-mass water ball is like getting hit by a light medicine ball (and I'm not a tiny guy, either. These things pack some kinetic energy).

sounds cool, but why, of all things, did you compare them to mcdonalds playgrounds

[SEAKING9006]

Because that's basically what the structures were, except ship-themed.

Or do you think I compared the GUNS to playscapes?