Funding

A place for general potato gun questions and discussions.
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Jared Haehnel
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Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:58 pm

...I brought a penny out side and planted it into the ground...a few weeks later a money tree grew... Thats how I get me funding...

On a more serious note...its tough to get a job at 14 I was there once. Your best bet is to make your own work like previously suggested...

Anyone know Why is copper so cheap in the UK?
My current projects....

Currently buying part for...
http://www.spudfiles.com/forums/my-new- ... rt,15.html
Still on the drawing board...
C02 tank hybrid
Screen doors for submarines...
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MaxuS the 2nd
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Sat Apr 05, 2008 1:01 pm

It's used alot for plumbing, whereas in the states, they use PVC instead. If you're lucky, you can get copper pipe/fittings for trade prices. :D
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Sat Apr 05, 2008 5:52 pm

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DYI
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Sat Apr 05, 2008 6:01 pm

You honestly think that anything other than several hundred pounds of high explosives is going to produce a report that is of sufficient magnitude to be heard 100km away? Sorry, but any sound wave of that magnitude would also be accompanied by blast overpressure so massive that it would likely destroy every structure and liquefy every biological organism within a 50 meter radius of the blast.
Who said it was anything other than that? :wink:

But you're right on the cost aspect: spudding isn't expensive unless you make it expensive. Paintball would be far moreso, even for me (I likely fall into the "high budget" category...)
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sniper hero
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Sat Apr 05, 2008 6:14 pm

I think that if you make a very good design of a gun you want to build you can calculate the exact amount of money you will spend. and then you can dicide if you are going to make it or not.

I know it isn't that easy and that some unexpected costs can appear but it's better then make a design then start and then it became too expansive.

I'm 14 so I know that costs are important but I found out that you can get a lot for free if you have connections with people that work with pipes and stuff like that
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coming: semi auto pellet sniper:D
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daberno123
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Sat Apr 05, 2008 6:18 pm

When I said spudding was expensive, I was comparing it to the small amount of money I make. I probably have only spent $150-$200 on spudding, which isn't all that much considering the pleasure I get out of it. Once I get a job and start making more money, spudding will probably seem alot cheaper to me.

As SB15 pointed out, there are alot of more expensive hobbies that make spudding look like pocket change compared to it.
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starman
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Sat Apr 05, 2008 6:24 pm

MaxuS the 2nd wrote:It's used alot for plumbing, whereas in the states, they use PVC instead. If you're lucky, you can get copper pipe/fittings for trade prices. :D
Hummm, I didn't know PVC was so expensive outside the US. No wonder we see a lot of copper/steel guns from Canada, Europe and Australia/NZ.

At the big-box hardware stores in the States, sched 40 PVC is almost as abundant as the air we breathe. Steel also available like that but smaller parts only...big parts you have to get from a metal supplier. Copper is available but prices here have shot way up the last 2 or 3 years. Sched 80 PVC parts are available just more limited access....usually only industrial customers.
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MrCrowley
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Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:03 pm

SpudBlaster15 wrote:Anyone who thinks spudding is an "expensive" hobby really needs a reality check.

The cost of a single ATV or snowmobile will probably equal 10-20 years of spending for even the most high budget amateur builders. My previous hobby, Nitro R/C cars, consumed $4 000 in 2 years. How I managed to afford such spending completely baffles me, but I know that 1.5 years of spudding has cost less than 1/8 of that figure. So don't complain about it being "too expensive".

Making enough money to fund spudding is not hard. I should know, as I live in one of the worst possible scenarios, in which I have to endure material prices double or triple the equivalent USA values due to greedy hardware stores, and deal with 70% of the town's population being unemployed, which has lead to businesses falling to shambles, most of which are now firing employees rather than hiring them. I still manage to build launchers among other projects. If you find you cannot afford things, 99% of the time it is due to lack of creativity, and you need to start using your brain intuitively rather than crying about your lack of money on the internet.
People who live outside the US and Canada are on a whole different spectrum, in America you can build a pneumatic for a tenth of what it'd cost me.

Sometimes I pay 13x more for PVC parts then what Americans pay, two or three times is nothing compared to that. I know PVC is harder to get in Canada, but I doubt it's that hard, just expensive. Like here.
Anyone who thinks spudding is an "expensive" hobby really needs a reality check.
I could easily spend $500 (NZD) on a cannon that would cost the average American Spudder $100 (NZD).

Spudding is an expensive hobby. I could buy one helluva air rifle for the $2500 + (NZD) i've spent on spudding.

Yes, you can spend alot more on other hobbys, but spudding is expensive if you don't live in America/Canada.
starman wrote:Hummm, I didn't know PVC was so expensive outside the US. No wonder we see a lot of copper/steel guns from Canada, Europe and Australia/NZ.
You don't get many copper guns from Aus/NZ because copper is just as expensive as PVC :)
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Hotwired
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Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:06 pm

I'm not entirely sure why it's said that copper is cheaper in the UK.

B&Q is a pretty big DIY place in the UK and it has the following prices for the most standard copper pipes:

15mm x 3m: £7.13 (~ $14.26)
22mm x 3m: £13.98 (~ $27.96)
28mm x 3m: £21.05 (~ $42.10)

(£1 ~ $2)

Anyway if you compare that to prices of rigid US copper (like this place p'raps) there's not much difference given a rough allowance for the difference in sizes.

The big difference between the UK and US seems to be that pressure rated plastic is not available in DIY stores and so gets used a lot less as you need a card to buy online.
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MaxuS the 2nd
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Sun Apr 06, 2008 3:48 am

Nah, that just means that B&Q is shit. If you shop around, you can find it for much better prices. I only ever go to B&Q for endfeed fittings, the pipe I get elsewhere. I usually only buy 1m or 2m at a time, so obviously it's going to be cheaper than a 3m length.

Spudblaster: That just means you have alot more money to spend than most people. As MrC said, spudding will cost ridiculous sums of money outside of the US, and sometimes it's money that's best spent a different way.
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jackssmirkingrevenge
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Sun Apr 06, 2008 4:48 am

Rather than find ways of making more money, another option would be to look into ways of spending less on spudgunning. Personally by using epoxy to cast my own fittings, valves etc. I never really spend money on most of my launchers except for barrel and chamber tubing, and even some of that is scrounged.
hectmarr wrote:You have to make many weapons, because this field is long and short life
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MaxuS the 2nd
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Sun Apr 06, 2008 5:06 am

I don't come across enough scrap to play with. :(

If I do something with epoxy other than use it for pistons, I feel as if I'm 'bodging' the job. So with me, it's either pay the price, or don't.
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jackssmirkingrevenge
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Sun Apr 06, 2008 5:40 am

Granted, but if you're on a student budget, anything is better than nothing - that way you can hone your skills until bigger budgets come along.
hectmarr wrote:You have to make many weapons, because this field is long and short life
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MaxuS the 2nd
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Sun Apr 06, 2008 6:16 am

Agreed.
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Hotwired
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Sun Apr 06, 2008 6:31 am

Actually Maxus, I did check with Bes.Ltd (online tradesmans place) and their prices are only a few pence less than B&Qs for the same lengths, then there's the delivery charge.

B&Q only really puts up the price on fittings.

I prefer buying pipe personally simply because I can check it first, there's hardly anything ever wrong with a fitting but pipe can have all kinds of dents and so on.
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