Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Potato guns aren't toys

im surprised for awhile there my brother didnt get a visit from ATF, he and his buddies spent a summer seeing just how high they could launch old washing machines.....turns out there is a fine line between getting one to levitate and getting one to spontaneously disassemble at ground level

I had a potato gun when I was a kid too, we used to take socks off of the clothes line and roll them up and shoot them at eachother, but the one that really sticks in my mind is the time my buddy grabbed a baseball glove and stood about 50-60 yards or so away and said he wanted to catch one, he was standing in front of a metal building with the glove and his arm kinda sticking out forming a triangle along his right side, he nodded and i shot that potato at him, he never saw the damn thing coming, it went between his arm and ribs in that little triangle, and the potato exploded on the metal building and turned the back of his black leather jacket completely white. I don't even like to think about what would have happened if I would have hit him with the potato.

I think that potato guns now fall under BATF regulation...

We blew a sand dune in half one night in Hatteras. WOW I had no idea what I was doing, very lucky nobody got hurt.

Potato guns always were my favorite brand of civilian-borne Jackassery. They kinda remind me of an M203 a little..it's entertaining.

Yeah.... potato guns and sparkler bombs and gasoline and gunpowder and......

Big difference between using oxyacetylene and starting fluid. You can't overcharge with ether because too much will mess up the fuel/air ratio and you won't get ignition until you clear it.

Oxyacetylene already has more than an optimum mixture and a little bit of that schitt will go a long way taking a combustion chamber with it.

And the oxy torch will shoot d size battery's also.
A long way.

This beer can mortar will shoot aluminum cans quite a long way if you put some sand in the can! We load black powder in it and use a long fuse!
whelennut

you guys would like to have a yugo sks with the grenade launcher.You can buy launcher blank rounds,and dummy grenades.I hear they will go about 500 yards.It has sights to shoulder fire them.somebody makes a tennis ball launcher adapter for it.

in the fall we used to fill a plastic garbage bag full of acetylene , and throw it into to a small town garbage pit, one guy would open up on the bag with his shotgun, the others on the skunks that would come boiling out

Flyer

"Life is tough! It's even tougher...if you're stupid!"

John Wayne

We use to get a glass jar full of gasoline and hang a spark plug with two wires running from it. Connect it to a car battery and watch the explosion. Thank good we didn't burn down the neighborhood.

Reggie

I'd feel more comfortable shooting someone with a toothpick out of a straw than shooting anything, or anybody with anything associated with an SKS at 500 Yards. Actual HE rounds out of an M203 aren't effective that far. More like 350m for area target.

We had this family in the neighborhood that used to encourage their kids to experiment like this. This was your typical 60's suburban neighborhood, but the P's had 8 foot craters in the back yard.

Fast forward to 1985. I had not heard from my buddy, Matt in probably 5 years or so. . Matt was still living in his family's house that was next door to the P's.

"Go get a copy of Science Digest!" He said.

"What?"


"Go get a copy of Science Digest!" He said.

"Why?"

"Go get a copy of Science Digest!" He said and then hung up.

I went to the nearest news stand downtown on my way home that night and picked up the latest copy of Science Digest.

There was John P. on the cover. John was being touted as one of Ronnie Raygun's new wunderkind for the future of US Weaponry. His specialty was thermonuclear warheads for sub-launched cruise missles.

So I guess something positive CAN come from all this mayhem after all.

Industry brought out many more possibilities


Hydrogen in a balloon, with a tail of zirconium foil trim.
( it burns like magnesium only brighter but slower )
In the 60's-90's we rolled it for flash bulb foil, the stuff that flashes the bulb )

Light the tail and release the balloon and it shoots skyward, until the balloon bursts the hydrogen.

Garbage bags hold a LOT of hydrogen. And make a huge flaming pop.
Think mini Zeppilen

I used a spud gun to explain the stoichiometric ratio in my auto class. I used the cheapest hairspray with alcohol, propane and butane in it. I would use a plastic film strip can as the projectile and shoot it at a wall in the classroom where I had soundproof ceiling tile attached. I would make the mixture too rich or lean and it wouldn't work but get it right and ARF it would send that film can out very quickly but it lost velocity like a ping pong ball. The kids loved it. One time I couldn't get the perfect mixture to fire. I figured the piezo igniter might be the problem. I opened up the expansion chamber lid and watched as I clicked the starter. I did this repeatedly when suddenly the charge ignited! The small fireball came up and lit my beard on fire. Oh the kids went nuts, falling off their chairs, laughing so hard they cried. My aide was next to me and he says your beard is on fire. I was rapidly wacking my face with my hands asking, "is it out, is it out?" I'll bet there are still students talking about it to their friends. Man, back in HS we had this crazy auto teacher......

This link could be the final evolution of our craziness. Anvil shooting! http://www.coolestone.com/media/895/Anvils_Away/

Zirc foil trims make a satisfactory cannon fuse replacement.

One can also stuff a mason jar full of it. Like a huge flash bulb.
Then add a bare stripped exstension cord and a fitting to fill the jar with hydrogen.

Taken out to the length of the cord into the back yard. Plug it in and kaB it.

Makes a foot or so crater in a 2 yard scorch.

One co worker actually wired on to the foreman's office light switch on night shift.

We took it off later before some one was killed.