Potato Cannon Stories
I am 16, me and my dad built the 3 inch potato gun, When I first glued it all together I didnt think about the glue being flammable so I hit the ignitor and a big ol' blue flame came out the end and hit the window. Then later after I shot it a couple times I came back in and was lookin in the cleanout end, and I hit the ignitor and a flame came wooshing out at my face. It was kinda scary, but cool at the same time, since I didn't get hurt either time. Thanks for all the GREAT instructions, (they were honestly the best I found on the internet).
A potato gun shooter for life,
Geoff H.
Washington (courtesy of The Spud Zone)
My 2 Friends Damian and Brendan were testing out our new "Spud Gun" by shooting it at a brick wall on the school behing my house. I was a good 80 yards away, and i thought I'd have to aim a little high. I aimed high, clicked the igniter, and BOOM! (more like plunk) The potato flew over the school. When i went to investigate, i peeked aroud the corner of the school and saw a circle of people standing in tuxedos pointing at the remains of a potato which flew everywhere. On the resturant they were at, on parked cars, on the parking lot, etc.
I never underestimated the power of a spud gun from then on,
David (courtesy of The Spud Zone)
Hi Spud shooter,
Thought you might get a kick out of a near miss we had the other night. After a couple of home brews and most of a ten lb. bag of spuds later we heard the noise. It was a flock of Canadian geese on their way over. They are real nuisances up here, all over parks and corporate lawns. Anyway the 4 x 2 was quickly loaded with WD-40 and wonder of wonders they came right over the deck. The igniter sparked and a great blast of fire swept skyward sending the spud through the flock. It was a great moment, I wish that I could report a hit , alas it was not to be. Maybe if I had the double barrel gun I might be able to report success. Next time. Like your pages.
Ralph (courtesy of The Spud Zone)
Chris, my friend, and I went down to the local store to by some spuds when we got a idea. The jelly beans where on sale for 69 cents per pound. Lets shoot some jelly beans. So we bought some jelly beans and some spuds. We went to Chris' house and loaded "Sir Spudest", his spud gun. We put in a spud then poured in some jelly beans. It worked well but then we got a better idea. We found out that if you shove a plastic bag down the gun then dump in some jelly beans, BOOM!! It was so cool. The jelly beans are still stuck in that tree.
Thanks,
Ryan Kratochvil (courtesy of The Spud Zone)
Dave Barry writes about spuguns
In the beginning, there were these nifty little devices called "tennis ball launchers." These were mortar-like devices constructed from soda cans and duct tape. Put a bit of lighter fluid in the tube, pop a tennis ball in there, hold a flame near the hole in the bottom can, and BOOM! There went your tennis ball, sailing through the air!
At some point, someone apparently changed the diameter of a can of soda such that one couldn't easily fit a tennis ball inside. A shame, it was. By the time I'd reached an age where building one of these became a possibility, the can diameter had already been changed. I thought all hope was lost. It was a sad day indeed.
All was not lost, however! Oh, my heavens, no! Somewhere, someone designed and built the first potato cannon. This device, made from PVC pipe, powered by hair spray and capable of launching chunks of potato hundreds of feet outperformed the tennis ball launcher by such a huge margin that the launchers of old were all but forgotten! The ammo was cheaper, the range was greater, the risk of the thing blowing up in your face was a whole hell of a lot less, and it was new, new, new!! New stuff is cool, but new stuff that makes loud bangs and shoots things rules! And thus began the Era of the Potato Cannon. --Mike's Potato Armaments Page
Well, this isn't so much of a story but how spud guns got used. :) After he saw mine, my brother-in-law asked me to make one for himself and his 9 year old son. (My brother-in-law generally gets the "shorts" before the paycheck comes in, so I wind up giving him and his family usefull birthday presents all year.) It's a fairly "typical" model, three feet of two inch PVC for the barrel, one foot of four inch PVC combustion chamber, "Coleman lantern" igniter in the end cap. I find putting the igniter in the end cap is best. There's no chance of the igniter getting flooded with fuel, and the cap can be flipped around and put in upside down to keep the igniter out of the way for easy storage. My brother-in-law and family live quite a ways outside city limits, so firing the spud gun in the yard causes no problems with neighbors. They have three horses, which got spooked during hunting season in years past. My brother-in-law and nephew figured out that firing spuds into the horse enclosure got them used to loud noises. Now the horses expect that a loud noise means than food is going to fall from the sky! The horses come running when they see the spud gun, because now they know they're going to get a treat. We used to use WD-40 for fuel, but the propellent in that stuff has been changed recently to carbon dioxide. The new stuff doesn't fire any more in spud guns. We've gone back to hair spray, and "starting ether" when the weather is cold. I've used alcohol and "Zippo" lighter fluid in warm weather too. --Spud City
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 Hi, my name is Craig Alberts. I would like to pass on a story of my stupidity to any of you before you do something like this.... I first saw a potato gun about 5 years ago. (built by a guy from Idaho!) Being a little curious, I proceeded to build my own gun. My design was similar to all the rest, but being an avid golfer, I knew what I wanted to shoot. Golf balls! I was able to find a pvc tube that fit to within .015" of the diameter of a standard ball. Barrel length was left at my standard 48" and I was using aerosol underarm deoderant for fuel. (you just have to make sure that you blow down the barrel after every shot to clear the chamber of burnt gasses) With this design I was able to shoot the ball 400 yards (and I did take it to a couple of courses to amaze my golf buddies) This distance didn't impress me enough so I started playing with barrel length. I finally settled on a 7 foot barrel and was now able to get about 800 yards out of the gun. I was able to shoot a ball straight through a 2x4 from about 15 feet. I used this gun for about 6 months and impressed a few cop buddies of mine who said that although spud guns were not illegal....that this weapon might be! On the Fourth of July in 1995 I was using this gun with a couple of friends in an out of the way place near the Grand Coulee Dam here in Washington. When one of my friends smashed his beer can and threw it on the ground and headed back to the truck for another brew, I said we should shoot his can back at him for punishment for littering.(I had shot cans off of the end of this gun before and amazingly the ball only goes through one end of the can and the can goes flying about 200 yards with the ball in it) I picked up the can and straightened it out, but I couldn't get the can to stay on the end of the barrel since the angle was going to be about 30 degrees.(I will note that I had not drank a single beer all weekend at this point since I was training for mountain bike racing) So I came up with the wacky idea that I would hold the can by the edges over the end of the barrel with my thumb and pointer finger easily clearing the barrel diameter and just let the ball take it out of my grip (just writing this is making me sick to my stomach) My friend who was going to be the one who pulled the trigger asked if I was sure this would be OK? I assured him that I had done this before and it would be fine (I had never held on to the can before) So after aiming the gun in the other friends direction, I yelled "Hey you litterbug, here's your stinkin can back!" The trigger was then pulled and there was a loud explosion and my entire arm was numb, my pointer finger was gone from the middle knuckle out, my thumb was blown to bits (it looked like a cigarette after being exploded by a cigarette load) and both myself and my buddy were completely covered with my blood! Needless to say I was quite shocked at what had just happened! My first instinct was to wrap my other hand around my now stubby pointer finger to stop my new found blood fountain! I then felt like I was having the worst dream I have ever had and actually closed my eyes and tried to wake up without this situation being real! It was not to be....I then yelled to my friend who was at his truck "were going to the hospital!" At this point I still had no feeling in my hand. The truck was driven over to me at a fast rate and we started our drive to find a hospital! The towns that we were near all have a max of about 5000 residents, so a large, well staffed hospital was out of the question. We stopped at a gas station and received directions to the only hospital for 50 miles. At the hospital (this is a Hospital?) we were received with questions on how did this happen? Try explaining to a doctor how you modified a potato gun to shoot golf balls and ended up doing this and ruining your weekend, his weekend, and a good part of your life! I was in deep shock at this point and was still trying to rationalize what I had done to myself. The doctor and nurses were doing their best to keep me alive since I had lost so much blood and was in a very deep shock and my blood pressure dropping rapidly. After what seemed like hours, my wife and my brother arrived and this helped pull me back to reality. The doctor said that my finger was blown into too many parts to be put back together,(they found only fragments) but my thumb was able to be mushed into a shape that resembles a thumb and stitched back together minus alot of the bone. We were camping out for this three day weekend, but my brainiac imitation ruined eveyones weekend as my brother was forced to drive my van and trailer back home because I needed to get back home and my wife was too shook up to drive. After about 4 months of constant doctors appointments, I was able to remove all the bandages and splints and start learning to live without being able to do things most of us take for granted. I am a Manufacturing Engineer by trade and this involves alot of typing and nose picking! This incident is now looked back on as one of the stupidest things a person could ever do. I do not own the gun anymore, nor do I ever want to have one again in the future. I do still have friends who bring out their spud guns to our get-togethers, but I still get a terrible feeling anytime I get around one. In closing I would like to say that just being careful with these guns is not enough (since I was always careful) you must be prepared to face the music if something unusual happens when you are trying to do something "different" (such as using new objects to shoot) with one of these toys! I still have to explain to my new son how daddy's hand got hurt! --The Ultimate Homemade Cannon
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 From: avrial@ix.netcom.com Be carefull with your toys,I heard of some fool trying to shoot a potato out of one biger than mine using starting fluid ether and had it blow up on him! Lost his right eye and most of the flesh on the right side of his face. Need to determine the bursting PSI of the tube and put a saftey valve somewhere on it in case the projectile jams. I made a potato cannon similar to yours, before visiting you page. My design uses two to three drops of gasoline. This worked exclent, launching potatos two to three blocks. It was a good thing that I wraped the barrel with duct tape because on my tenth launch the gun exploded. I wasn't hurt, but I decided that it was too dangerous. So I built another one similar and used acetlyne and pure oxygen from a gas welder. This worked even better than the gasoline, but this was extremely dangerous and I only did the one launch (I never found the potato). After these experiences I have gone to compressed air and have had much better and safer luck. My friend built a patato cannon and made a near fatel mistake! After he installed the barbique starter, he looked down the barrel to test if the ark was suficient, his word of advise is WAIT FOR THE GLUE TO DRY AND ALL THE FUMES DISIPATE BEFORE TESTING THE IGNITOR! Needless to say, he almost blew his head off!--The Ultimate Homemade Cannon
I recently built a potato gun with a 5" chamber and 2" barrel. Me and my friend were to scared to push the button for the first time as we have heard the stories of guns jamming on the first shot so we decided to set up our gun on a tri-pod and push the button with a stick. All was going well until we pushed the button and the tri-pod suddenly moved to face our house and blew a hole in the kitchen window and out through our stain glass door. I won't be seeing daylight for a long time because my old lady was pretty pissed off!!!!!!!! --Burnett@sk.sympatico.ca
I was finishing up some spuds that were starting to go bad. On my last one, I wanted to see how high it would go if I shot it straight up. I tried to aim it so it would not hit anything when it landed. The wind must have moved it because, after a very high flight, it came down on our neighbor's trailer! I don't think it did any damage. I'm just glad no one lives there anymore! --ke4juc@hotmail.com
I am 14. I build my first spud gun at 13. I love shooting my gun so much that I now run "The Spud Gun Heaven". My first gun was the "average" design. Me and my friend Chris made it. The night it was dry, my parents were having a little get togeter with like 8 people. We didnt have any spuds, but we did have onions! I find these to work just as well. It was about 9:00pm so it was nice and dark. Everyone was standing out side waiting. We had the gun all set up. We rested it on a slanted board. The one thing i didnt account for was, kickback! After I fired I must have had a bruise on my leg for a week!! That thing flew back so fast. But the nice flaming onion did amuse everyone =) Now I like my new, bigger potato gun. I once stood about 50 feet away from one of our 200 year old trees. Lets just say my parents weren't to happy to see all the bark gone in a 5 foot square area!!!--poiuyt@bit-net.com
When I made my first spud gun I could not get it to work. Then one day my dad brought me home a can of ether. I must have not used it right, but one day I went to check the sparker and I forgot to clean it out first. A giant flame came whooshing out at my face. I dropped the gun and yelled OH F@#$! I learned my lesson. --hopehall@monumental.com(Robert Hall)
I am 12 years old and I have made a spud gun out of ABS tubing. It is about 6 feet long and has a combustion chamber 4 inches in diameter. I use a typical lantern sparker as a igniter. Anyway my dad and I were outside one night whith some relatives. So we thought it would be cool to show it off. We set it down on a piknick table and loaded it with a small tape ball. Then we sprayed about 14 seconds of WD-40. I flicked the sparker (aiming it at our fence)then a load KA-BOOM!! When the tape ball hit the fence we heard a loud CRACK. We went and took a look at the fence and saw that it had left 2 huge cracks up along the fence peice right trough both sides of the 1 inch spruce wood. Then I laught at my dad. MY DOG jumped two feet in the air and ran as fast as he could sliping through his shit.
Me and my friends Shane, Mike, and Brian decided to get together at my house for a little summer get-together My friend Mike had just brought up his potato gun when I remembered some dork who we all hated was having a pool party down the street. I had just picked up some beer and rolling paper from this kid Matt I knew from the projects down the street since none of us are 21. Hell none of us are even 18. But any way we started drinking and my friend Shane (who hated the kid the most) got an idea, "Let's crash the party with the potato gun" . At first it was a joke, but every time he said it it made more sense. I said first lets cruise it without the gun. So I hopped on my moped real quick and drove by. I saw people in the pool enjoying them selfs so others drinking, smoking...well you get the idea. I decide to drive up in the driveway after turning around and saying "hi". Well some dumbass I also knew and hate told me to get the fuck out of there and decides to throw a beer bottle at me, the kid on the moped. Before I departed I warned them to watch the sky and of course they had no clue what I ment. So I go back to my house and tell the guys "we're going on a bombing mission," which is what I say when we go out and shoot the potato gun. We developed a plan to come up from behind the pool party unseen from a neighbors back yard who went on vacation convienently that week. Also coincidently they had some overgrown hedge separating the yards. So we go back there and out of nowhere Shane starts yelling shit at the people in the pool and the people trying to dive. The kid on the diving board Casey recognizes Shanes's voice and says, "shut up Shane," and of course mildly drunk we can't stop laughing. We eventually come to ourselves and load the gun. I was to get the first shot. I didn't want to hit any body but I wanted to scare the hell out of them. So I worked out an angle to hit the roof of the house. I aimed and fired. I missed. It went way over the house and hit the house across the street's roof. Which I didn't know at the time, so we loaded it again. It was Mike's turn who gets a little carried away with this type of thing. After talking him out of blowing some punk's head off, he shot it almost straight up. The desecrated piece of potato went right in the middle of the pool. Or thats what they say. If you could have only seen there faces when they heard the cannon explode with force and then when the potato hit the water. Even though we got a pretty poor viewing of the fiasco through the hedge we saw enough to be satisfied. So we went back to my house and finished up the beer and rolled a substance in the rolling paper and smoked it. We then went down to the park in the projects to hang out on the play groung equipment. It was roughly 11:20, about an hour and a half after we had shot the potato gun when my friend Shane thought he had seen a cop drive by. The rest of us told him he was drunk and paranoid like he usually is when he is drunk so we didn't believe him. Then about ten minuets later he swears he sees another one. So we run out to the street to go look. Of course it's dark out and we can't tell a geo metro from a limo. So we decided to go back to my house because we had been gone for a while. When we got to the corner where my house is I noticed like four cops at the house where the party was. I immidiatly thought that the party was being broken up. Then it hit me maybe they or someone called the cops on us! I told the distressing news to the guys and Shane thinks the best thing to do is hide in my neighbors bushes. It was good for a while, every so often I would go out in the street see what the cops were up to. After about 15 minutes of that I said what the hell are we doing in my neighbors yard. So we go to cross over to my yard and I notice all four cops are gone. So I'm standing in the street perplexed when I hear the roar of what I know now as a fleet of local police enforcement cars. I the jump into my yard, me and my three friends are all hiding behind this row of bushes in my backyard which for some reason I trimmed the week before. I had never done it in my life before but I did it the week I was hiding from the cops. Any way we're behind the bushes and the cops roll up like I'm suppling all of the Bronx with crack. No lie FIVE cop cars roll up. Three on the side and two out front which after they turned I couldn't see because my house was in the way. One out of the ten officers knocks on my door. The other nine covering him in case of an ambush or something. I had just the right angle to see my mom open the door. My mom who was standing right next to the gun (still to this day I don't know why Mike put it there) acts pretty normal about it. My mom and the cop were talking for like 20 minutes. I had a hard time deciding whether to stay hiding or "come out with my hands up". I stayed hiding like a coward but it payed off. The cops finally left with out the potato gun, my mom or anything. Me dealing with cops before knew the two that went to the front were probably still there. So I go to check it out and to my surprise nothing is there. So after like a half an hour thinking of how I was in shit over my head, I decided to go in side with my friends (who were staying the night). We saw the end of The Late Show with David Letterman. As the credits were rolling my mom comes out and askes "Do you know who I was just talking to?" me being a smart ass like I am said "yea the police". She seemed a little startled that I knew this and went on and on about how she said one of these days we were going to get caught with that thing, and that she always knew I was an asshole but that was it. Just a big lecture! No punishment no groundation no nothing!! But she made me give the potato gun back to Mike. Or at least to her knowledge. Since then I just hide it out in the shed with all of the other stuff she tells me to get rid of, because no one besides me even goes in there. But we have learned a very important lessons from all of this, like don't drink and shoot, don't shoot in a well populated area (chuckle), and the next thing I do illegal and someone calls the cops I know I have a good hour and a half before they show up. The story here IS true some people remanded anonymous for their protection. I go by Geo p and me and my friends love shooting potato guns and riding old mopeds and scooters like Cimatti and Lambretta. Please post this story for the benefit of all potato gun shooters everywhere. --camode@aol.com
I would just like to tell you my own personal experience. Any ways, a while back my dad made his friend a hairspray powered one. After that we decided to build our own. Pneumatic that is. We got all the parts together a year or two ago and decided to finally build it (5/23/98). For ours we used a tupperware lid for the diaphragm and we used one of the things you use on compressed air hoses to hook it together as the attachment to the chamber.
After doing some low pressure barrel position tests we glued it into its final possition. After the glue dried it wouldn't work so we cut the chamber in halve, cut off 3/4 of an inch and glued it back together using a cuppling. After it dried we tested it at 40 psi and it put a crack in a piece of reinforced half-inch plywood. At 60 psi the potato went right through and kept going hitting the neighbor's shed. Good thing it was at night.
At 60 psi you can use it to rip the bark of trees. We haven't taken it up to 120 psi yet and won't until we build a tripod for it (Our next project). I have no clue what it'll do at 120 though. We are currently trying to adapt it to fire water balloons.--dillon.electric@erols.com (Byron Dillon)
In the summer I have a lot of fun with my 3 potato guns. One year there was an article in the neighbor hood watch letter about potato guns. I was the only one in the whole subdivision that had one so of course it was about me. In the letter it said not to launch screwdrivers and rocks. Bunch of crap.--davidgabel@worldnet.att.net
My neighbors have this dog that barks whenever I shoot my gun. But I just ignore him. One day I looked in the fridge for some spuds and I found some apples...nah...I found nothing...I then found some old left over spaghetti--COOL! I put a glob of wet TP in the barrel (I use this to shoot my nails & rocks and other stuff that's small). I rammed a whole handful of spaghetti down to the wad of TP. I was about to shoot straight up when I saw the dog. This dog was so funny looking with all this spaghetti on it. The dog was covered in it. There was spaghetti on its head and face and on its back. This dog that always looked ferocious and constantly barked at me just stood there with this look of shock and a look of "What the hell just happened?" And it began to eat the spaghetti I shot at it! I never shoot anything harmful at animals, and I do not advocate it. Spaghetti was a one-time thing. Only when have you been actually shot by a spud gun, will you understand why it is no fun to shoot at animals.--ChimpBoy4@aol.com