backyard ballistics - potato cannon

On Sunday I tweeted:

Oh NO, I forgot that with spring comes my uber annoying neighbor and his frigging stereo playing full blast outside while he putters. JERK!

A few hours later, I strongly suspect HE tweeted:

Oh NO, I forgot that with spring the weird homeschoolers who live behind me start blowing things up in their backyard! JERKS!

You too can disturb your neighbours with creations such as the tennis ball mortar, or, Hugo & Roo's latest, the Potato Cannon aka the Spud Gun.

What you need is this book: Backyard Ballistics, a bit of spare change for supplies (but really, they're reasonably priced!), and some neighbours to annoy (optional!)

The Potato Cannon calls for pvc but we had a bunch of abs left over from fixing the bathroom. Instructions and supply lists are clearly laid out. Hugo & Roo had a hard time finding a "flint & steel lantern sparker" and finally, after rambling through the aisles of Canadian Tire for several hours (distracted by a bunch of other things, no doubt) they came home with something else (to the shouts of Improvise! Adapt! & Overcome! Like a Marine!)

This is a universal ignitor kit for BBQ's. Here it's already been installed into the cap end of the cannon.

Here's the ignition in action:



Here's everything all assembled. The purple tin is hairspray, which is the fuel that's ignited to launch the potato.



Here's Hugo loading the cannon. The potato has to be large enough to just barely fit into the barrel. In fact, the edge of the barrel is sharpened so you can take a large potato & hammer it in.

Then you push it in with a broom stick.

The target? Our shed. I came out to photograph and video the events and asked Roo "so how hard does this thing launch the potato? Is it actually going to destroy the shed?"

And he just laughed maniacally and said "I don't know!!!"

I blame excessive exposure to the abs cement fumes for his utter lack of concern for the shed.

I mean, yeah, the shed has been derelict and has risked the censure of the international community, and diplomats have been dispatched asking it to clean itself up, fix that leaking roof and for gad's sake, replace that facia board so you're not such an eyesore! But to just go on in and start shooing at it? Seems a little extreme to me..... I abstained from the voting.....

And finally, here's a boom!



And here's another:



What a satisfying boom! And the potatoes were really flying! We even messed around with targetting and had a couple good runs and aiming directly for the lock on the door.

Here I am risking my life to film from the perspective of the target. I got an EmbedPlus thingamajig for it so that if you click on the SLOW button in bottom left, you can see the cannon's recoil in slow mo. Go on! You know want to!



The shed survived by the way.