RetiredUSNChief
Member
"Potato guns" are not silencers.
If you're interested in seen the really cool 2/3 scale replica of a 24 pound cannon from the USS Constitution that I made, take a look at the video link in my signature.
It's a carbide cannon, about 6 feet long. The audio in the video really doesn't do it justice.
This wasn't designed to be a spud gun though...I had a limited time to finish it the summer that I started work on it, so I didn't do any testing of the core assembly before I did all the body work on it. And I wasn't about to risk blowing it up afterwards by jamming a potato down the bore.
The weak spot for this as a spud gun would be the fact that it has a 6 inch diameter firing chamber and the breech end is a 6 inch cleanout plug. That's an AWFUL lot of surface area for the forces of igniting acetylene to act upon. If I were to build another as a spud gun, I'd engineer reenforcement of the firing chamber region for safety.
However, it does a rather fine job of shooting these perfectly fitting, oversized 3" diameter tennis balls out to about 100 yards.
If you're interested in seen the really cool 2/3 scale replica of a 24 pound cannon from the USS Constitution that I made, take a look at the video link in my signature.
It's a carbide cannon, about 6 feet long. The audio in the video really doesn't do it justice.
This wasn't designed to be a spud gun though...I had a limited time to finish it the summer that I started work on it, so I didn't do any testing of the core assembly before I did all the body work on it. And I wasn't about to risk blowing it up afterwards by jamming a potato down the bore.
The weak spot for this as a spud gun would be the fact that it has a 6 inch diameter firing chamber and the breech end is a 6 inch cleanout plug. That's an AWFUL lot of surface area for the forces of igniting acetylene to act upon. If I were to build another as a spud gun, I'd engineer reenforcement of the firing chamber region for safety.
However, it does a rather fine job of shooting these perfectly fitting, oversized 3" diameter tennis balls out to about 100 yards.