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Give in to your inner 13 year old- Potato Gun

F

frosty

This guy and I come up with projects ~1/month. These have been everything from modding  a bb machine gun, to building a wii nunchuck computer mouse. We built a potato gun. For some reason this project resonated with the other guy. He did research on the chamber to barrel volume ratio how to paint ghost stripes etc.
 
One thing he wanted to do was have a glowing potato explode against a hard backstop. He thought about it and tried various things. Eventually he figured out that if he blanched the potatos and put them in a vaccuumed jar of highliter ink for a day they would glow under a black light.  It was so cool to see.
 
Unfortunately, we either don't have a good enough camera or the skills to record it well. So he came up with a juvenile script and posted a video of the potato exploding in slow motion. If we figure out how to record the "glow in the dark" potato I'll report back.
[SIZE=medium]http://youtu.be/QzEt9QXhR6M[/SIZE]
 
 
better with sound.
 
Awesome! 
 
Nothing like tapping into the inner juvenile delinquent. 
 
Riding my bike to work does it for me, too. 
 
Prost!
 
We built a potato gun back in the day that looked identical to that one (except ours was white).... we used a cheap grill ignitor for the spark... good times.
 
As a 13 yr. old our potato gun was an empty metal cartridge from a ball point pen and a piece of coat hanger wire.
You pushed the cartridge in the potato about 1/4 inch,both ends,to load it.
push the wire quickly into the cartridge and it would shoot the potato piece out...
Only problem was they pop when you shoot them,too easy to get caught shooting them in class.

We had to synchronize our attacks so pops came at the same time from all over the class room.

I remember when we had a teacher who ratted her hair up.
Everyone would aim for her hair.
She couldn't feel the potato chunks hitting her hair.
By the end of the day she had a couple orders of uncooked french fries in her hair. LOL

Shooting the lights with a bunch of potato chunks would eventually start to cook on the light sixtures hanging from the ceiling (no Fluoros back then).
When a bulb started smoking we'd get an extra recess while the janitor put in a new bulb.
No fun after a couple times.They figured out some kid/kids had sabotaged the bulb.
When the bulbs started smoking the teachers ignored it and made us stay in class no matter how much the room smelled like burnt potato.

Apples and almost anything that you could stab the pen cartridge in worked as ammo.
Bananas that were slightly raw/green worked for the best splatter effect.

Pencil erasers were the high end ammo of choice for anti personnel weapons because they didn't squash on contact.
The almost clear tan erasers worked better than pink ones.They were more gummy and fired better.
 
Cool !!
 
Our potato guns were a bunch of taped up coke cans with the ends cut out, except for the last can, where we'd leave the pull tab for the hair spray and fire hole. 
Tennis balls worked best!!!  We'd even douse the balls with some fluid for better distance, but finally they'd burn up.
 
!!
 
hotty brown said:
Cool !!
 
Our potato guns were a bunch of taped up coke cans with the ends cut out, except for the last can, where we'd leave the pull tab for the hair spray and fire hole. 
Tennis balls worked best!!!  We'd even douse the balls with some fluid for better distance, but finally they'd burn up.
 
!!
Click to expand...
Lol... thast sounds dangerous as hell XD
 
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