Spud Gun:My
grandson was visiting me while I was with Oregon Museum of
Science & Industry. I had him build a spud
gun for our
outreach dept to teach something or the other
with.
It had interchangeable barrels of different
diameters and fired with 2 seconds of hair spray.
We added electronic Ignition from a Campfire
propane lighter. Had to quit shooting it into
the river when some patrons objected to the
Barbie doll we were putting on top of the Potato.
I was worried what my son in law would say
about his son building what is now an illegal
device in Oregon, but I got a bunch of
pictures
from thier family retreat in White cloud
Mich.
It seems My son in law and all three grandsoms
invaded the local hardware store and assembled
a spud gun in the Plumbing aisle, cutting and
gluing parts right there. They added an
expansion
chamber to increase the force of the blast and
since
bill is a chemical engineer, he added WD40
and
starting fluid to the propellant. They spent
two
weeks firing the gun out into lake michigan.
Spud guns forever.
<p>
I received this tale fromEd Glenn <eglenn@ncwebsurfer.com>wrote
I built a cannon from an old piece of navy
bronze about 25 years back. It shot
8 oz. round
lead balls ( made from an old fishing sinker
mold ), using homemade black
powder and purchased
cannon fuse. It had an effective range of over
300 yards. I made the 14 spoke
wheels from black
walnut, and the scale was about 1/10 so it weighed
just over 100 pounds. A gun
dealer offered
me $2500 for it back when I needed the money
way more than the cannon, but I
have always been sorry I let it go. I had about
400 hours build time in it. At 300
yards, it would shoot a group
about 8 or 10 feet, as near as we could ever
figure out. It had to be anchored
very solid to get a
grouping, and just firing it moved it around
some.
We had a couple potato cannons
on our annual houseboat trip last year, and
shot them one
night, it puts out a blue flame a foot long.
True Story---One of the guys slid a
small, dead bass in
on top of the potato slug and we fired it at
a buzzard--gives new meaning to the
term "fast food".
But the funniest part was the comment "Momma
bass-'I am soo proud. I have
10,000 children
in the Navy, and now I have one in the Air Force'
". We nearly rolled off the
deck, we laughed so
hard. Funny thing though, when I told my
wife about it, she just gave me this
blank look. I guess
you had to be there.
Ed Glenn aka "Capt. Grampa", Lifetime member
of the NFLCC (National
Fishing Lure Collectors Club); Member of ORCA
(Old Reel Collectors
Assoc.)