build a potato gun

It was amazing. We broke through our elderly neighbor’s window! Oops!

Ya that was prety fun, even tho its a felony in my state. Hairspray and 20 bucks worth of stuff from home depot, they’ll point you in the right direction too. :)

I used compressed air from a bicycle pump.

I built one last summer and had a blast shooting it. I’ve had good luck using hair spray and deoderant as fuel, but I think the best fuel I’ve used so far is disinfectant spray. The spark sets off the propellant, and the disinfectant is about 80% alcohol, so it burns hot, slow and the muzzle blast comes out blue!. Lysol or any of the generic brands work. It doesn’t get the inside of the gun all sticky, so I don’t have to clean the inside after playing with it. It’s about 3 1/2 feet long and shoots about 400 feet or so.

I shot a brick wall with it at close range. When the shower of potato finished falling, there was hardly a recognizable piece of potato to be found. This 4th of July, I plan to take some potatoes and marinate them in some of that green ‘glow stick” juice. Then I’ll take some kids out to the field early in the evening, Fire the glowing potatoes in the air and have the kids play “Find the Kryptonite!“

We passed this off as a high school physics project twice!

But the more impressive feat was being allowed to walk away with the spud launcher after being stopped by a police officer at the local reservoir.

i’ve done 5 so far and still making more (im a cb freak) im working on one cb that will take the blast from acetylene does anyone no what type of material thats good?

The combustion potato gun is limited by what it can shoot and the distance. I suggest a Phneumatic potato gun. It allows you to shoot anything that fits down the barrel and has a much greater distance advantage. not only this but allows you to change the distance by adjusting the PSI in the holding chamber. A phneumatic gun is built almost the same as a combustion gun only with a few more parts (Tubeless tire valve, ball valve/butterfly valve, pressure gauge). I personally use it for a game of paintball just put a wad of newspaper down the barrel and a couple dozen paintballs and then some more wadding.

Easy to do… hours of fun! I would bring this to school as a demonstration for projectile motion and combustion reactions if I wasn’t so sure I would get fired on the spot.

Andy picked up the starter and we finally finished the potato cannon. I had some potatoes in cupboard and we shot ten or so in the field next to the house. The kids from next door brought over some additional potatoes and we let them shoot a couple themselves.

This was a fun project and pretty easy to do. There’s a little kickback from the gun, but it’s not bad. We used real PVC glue and that is working well, this thing isn’t coming apart. :)

use starter fluied works the best