so ok a friend of mine are horrendiously bored and we are running out of fireworks so we are going to make a potato gun/cannon. we know how, its just been a while but i was wanting to make a remote ignition box to shoot the thing, and also it could be useful for other explosion related projects in the future.

so any way we're going to use old PSU's for connectors and internal wiring since the different colors make it easy to differentiate what wire is for what, but what i want to do to start off buliding a simple box, and then upgrade it from there to something a bit more advanced, provide better spark ect.

a couple of 9 Volters in what ever way to make a decent big spark, an on/off switch to "arm" and a status light that basicly tells us that the box is on and a momentary button/switch to of course, make zappy. a connector on the end to connect the trailing wire to the cannon

probally use a few dozen feet of speaker wire to the cannon which will have another PSU connector on it on the other side for the cannon.

you guys have any ideas?

my main concern is getting it so when i turn the on/off switch on that the light comming on with it doesent suck so much voltage that it kills a decent spark or if if putting 9 volters in series would be too much for it and kill it and possibly the circuit.

i'm having a blond moment, batteries in series will up the voltage with each battery right?
4 * 9v = 36v right? not including resistance and such

 

I've seen people just use a stung gun/tazer

 

yea well we dont want to do that, we'd be able to use this box for other blow upable stuff

 

You could use it for other stuff! You put wires on the leads coming out of the tazer, that spark it makes can set off black powder and the like.

 

I kept things simple with my canon. The biggest diameter ABS i could find, 4" i think, 2 galvanized nails, 1 large heavy duty 4.5v battery and a transformer to up the punch. That **** rocked. We never recovered a potato because the either atomized or flew to far to see it land. Plus the juice from ignitor could be used to blow all kinds of stuff up. Lots of fun. Post some pics or a video when you get your artillery and firing.

 

my ignition setup for my potato cannon is a flint sparker. works just about everytime...

you can get em for like 3 bucks at walmart.
i also use dove hairspray for propellant. that works awesome, imo.

 

well somethings up, we think we have pressure loss some where because the first night we went out we used a flexable neck lighter in the bottom of the clean out we had a hole for it.

we shot all sorts of ****.

last night we got a BBQ clicker and i installed it onto a new clean out and it wont go at all, then we used the old cleanout with the flexy lighter and it wouldnt light with it.

we even trid a bunch of different propellents and even what we used the first time.

it seems no matter what nothing works the way it should.

 

Maybe to much fuel?

 

we've tried very little and a ton of fuel, airing it out each time and using a mop if theres bulid up and still nothing, its werid

 

Its funny how sometimes things that should go up in flames just sits there like water.