SpudFiles

Has anyone used calcium carbide & water in there spudgun instead of compressed air? Coz there was a video i saw about this guy firing a frozen potato at a 50 gallon drum and putting a big hole on top of it by the way he was using calcium carbide and water.so i wanna know which is more powerful , compressed air or calcium carbide + water.

calsium carbide gas is acetylene, it is extremely dangerous and no one has ever attemped it, but it also depends on the valve.

yes they have...isnt that the same thing as a carbide cannon? and its not the pressure from the gas created that launches the potato, its the gas thats created and ignited. i could be completely wrong but im pretty sure thats how it works.

Lol... indeed, a carbide cannon is a combustion, not a pneumatic. Acetylene would be a VERY BAD idea to use as a propelling gas in a pneumatic, since it self-detonates at a very low pressure.

it self detonates at around 15 psi i believe.

self detonates? that would be fun with a metal gun and burst disk. put a little calcium carbonate and water in the chamber and when it gets to 15 psi it will detonate, break the burst disk and fire the projectile. you should have plenty of time to get far away while its building pressure.

You could have yourself a hybrid there.

Yup, I think I'll try such a design in the next few weeks. I don't like the lack of control in the "wait for it to reach given pressure" design, so I guess I'll be using a piston to trigger it.

how would a piston ignite it? it ignites itself at 15 psi so inless you use a piston to compress it really fast and get it to 15 psi to ignite (possibility) you cant really control when it goes off without an ignition source. and that would take away from the coolness of the concept that it ignites at 15 psi by itself.

Benny, you fail at:
1) reading comprehension
2) fact
3) proper fear mongering

1) Obviously, someone has tried it. Roughboy just gave you an example.
2) There have been many people who have used acetalene, even oxygen enriched. Their ABS cannons typicaly only are useful for a short time before they wear out, but they are indeed safe to use.
3) Do you really think that little statment is going to scare 'em?

Anyway, I don't acctualy know if acetalene would provide more power. There have been no real studies into it.

How do you want your grave stones to look like?

There should be a global announcement called "Acetylene is not the Devil!"
Here's a video of a spud gun that uses HCCH:
Does it blow up like C4? It doesn't, does it? And... OMFG! The guy is actually HOLDING IT!!!!!!!!!!!1111one!
As I've said COUNTLESS times before: Acetylene has been used in homemade cannons long before propane. It does wear them out quicker because of the very high temperature generated. It only provides more power to the projectile in certain situations (specific bore and projectile weight).
These are the facts.
Acetylene can blow s**t up. So can flour. So what?

This has been your 2 AM rant .

yeah there used to be toy cannons based on this. if they sold it as a toy, it cant be that bad.

yeah, but that was in the 70's. Would you really trust a toy form the 70's to be safe

nope. but im pretty sure they wouldnt sell a toy that killed every other kid that used it.