SpudFiles

my pneumatic cannon i built has 2 3" by 12" air tanks and 2 1" lawn genie sprinkler valves hooked up to 1 blow gun trigger. my problem is that the valves wont open after i pressurize the tanks to 80 psi but they do close and stop leaking air from the barrel. when I hold down the blow gun trigger all the air comes out of it none out the barrel even if i just squeeze it real quick it does the same thing. all i know is that something is keeping the diaphragm from going up. So can someone help me figure out why my valves wont open

Take it apart and make sure theres nothing in the way.

yeah i did that and the only thing that i think is messing it up is either the spring or the vasaline i put on it but there is hardly any so i don't no why the stupid diaphragm wont go up

Check the way the arrows on the valves are pointed. Are the sprinkler's accuateing a piston valve? Can you get a pic up?

the arrows are pointing away from the air tanks and no i am not actuating a piston valve oh and i can get a pic up but not right now maybe tomorrow

just get a new sprinkler valve.....$12-$20

the home depot that i went has no more i got the last ones.
i have a few question don't be mad because this is my first potato gun
when i fire it am i supposed to hold down the blow gun trigger or just for a second?

would it help if i flipped my valves up side down?

would having a lot of excess air hose cause it not to open? i can shorten it

last question...
would using a ball valve instead of a blow gun trigger help if nothing above could fix it?
thanx

I had the problem of my valve not working; it helped when I removed the 5foot cord, so yes the long cord doesn’t help.

ohh man thanks so much for helping me i was just about to go by 2 new valves off the internet. ill try to post some pics and i might do instructions for it this weekend. my canon is nothing really unique about it it looks like joels double chamber tennis ball cannon but i have interchangeable barrels. I made like 20 200 caliber ice bullets that have points on them and i cant wait to shoot them tomorrow but i should have a rifled barrel because they will just tumble in the air. thanks so much for the tip judgment_arms

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Don’t bother rifling unless you know what your doing, heck I know what I’m doing but I’ll probably screw it up, it’s much simpler to rifle your slugs. I’m not going to tell you how, the research will do ya’ good. Or use balls round balls will be slightly more accurate than an elongated projectile out o’ a smooth bore. But anyway, glad to help, gives me an excuse to be on the computer.

And yes a ball valve would help. It has a lot more flow then the standard blow gun. And for the rifled barrel I say dont get it. I think that its over kill on a spud gun and not worth the money that you pay Joel to make it for you. Plus if you are using a ice projectile its would just break off in the rifling and it would hinder performance because the air would pass around the projectile. I may be wrong but I dont believe its worth the money.

Good luck on your gun. I had trouble with my first sprinkler gun as well. It took me well over 2 weeks to get it to work. So dont feel embarrassed.

Damn you beat me to talking about riffling. I hate being a slow typer...

I was waiting for the reply so I could see what he had to say. It took my 90% of the time from when he posted to when I posted to type it, I type so slow by the time I get done somebody’s usually already said something. I cheat I type every thing in Word so I know most of the words are spelled right, as a side note: grammar check sucks...

You can download ABC check from www.iespell.com

BRAIN FART!!! What if you bought a short piece of rifled PVC…can you buy short pieces? Well ether way, use a short section of rifled PVC as a mold to for a rifled pycrete slug!!! Fire it out of a smoothbore. Why you ask, simple the pycrete would just rip out the rifling if shot out of a rifled barrel. Why pycrete, because it’s cheaper than concrete, easy to make, and strong.
Random thought: brain fart sounds dumb…and retarded…maybe even gay…to lazy to change it…