Me and a friend of mine have devised the strongest and most powerfull spud gun(i think). We took a piece of seamless 6" round 1/4" thick steel tubing. This piece is 2' long. We welded 1/4" thick end plates on each end. The 4' long barrel is the perfect size for a golf ball!!! We use WD 40, carburetor cleaner, and oxygen for fuel(all at the same time). To ignite this bad boy, we take a small hand held propane torch and wave the flame over a 1/16" hole in the side of the gun. We have shot the gun safely many times now, but I'm starting to go deaf see that it is louder than a 10 gauge shot gun(seriously). We haven't been able to track how far the golf balls go yet, we've tried string and just searching for it, but can't ever find it(oh well). We call this gun "The Beast II". The reason for the II is we are currently building a 8" chambered golf ball shooter(dear god). For the ignition system we have devised a way to shoot .22 blanks in the chamber. We are also making a way to test a gun power. We take a metal box and cut slots in it to put 1/2" thick plywood to shoot through. So far we have only gone completely through 4 pieces. We are currently trying to break through 6.

Story by: Dusty Casey
P.S. I got caught shotting my spud gun in city limits and the only thing the cops could do was give me a ticket for Disorderly Conduct for Noise. It cost $195.00. Oops!

Pneumatic Fun!

Here is something that happened to me and a friend of mine that would make us believers about the power of these cannons. I found the plans to make a pneumatic spud-cannon on the web on day and found all of the items to make that particular one. After it was all said and done, i brought this cannon to a local mechanics shop. They had about 140 psi coming out of their air-guns and i thought it would do just fine. After loading the potato down the long barrel and then making sure that it was in place, we aimed it at a big steel garbage bin. Approximately 30-40 yards away from the steel bin we loaded the cannon with air. There were some pretty high-pitched sounds coming from the air chamber as we loaded it. When we thought there was enough air, my buddy pulled out the air-gun releasing the air. What a sound as this thing let go. We couldn't even see this thing going through the air, but when every thing was done we all went over to the garbage bin, there was a soft-ball sized dent into the side of the bin. WOW, i wonder what a turnip would do instead of the potato??
Story by: Jordan valiquette

The unsuspecting employer

My boss was fascinated by the idea of hurling a tuber at that rate of speed and just HAD to give it a try. I loaded a particularly large specimen of Idaho's finest into the barrel, gave it an extra shot of AquaNet, and handed the wonderful device over to him.

"Where should I shoot?" my unsuspecting employer asked.

Knowing that our location posed a problem as far as range was concerned, I pointed to what I thought was a very sturdy fence between us and the business behind us (built and paid for by the other business). At what seemed like the same instant, the gun barked loudly and and a spud sized hole appeared in the fence. I sensed that a short debate of the relative strengths of wood versus potatoes was about to start, but I was mistaken. As I turned to my left, I noticed that the boss had dropped the still smoking device of destruction into the back of my pickup and was now running to the back door of the shop, not unlike a boy that had pitched a snowball at a passing car in jest and had unexpectedly connected.
I suspect that I will hold this over his head for some time.

Story by David Bajema

Dog-food-shotgun-spud-gun

The other day me and my buddy were putting dog food in sandwich bags and shooting them out of my spud gun. The dog food would spread out all over the place. We shot the neighbors fence, and dog food turned into powder as it knocked many boards from the fence. Then we shot at the horses, hitting three of them with one shot.

Story by: Big Ben Blair

Phat Orange

Hi my Name is Danny, and I just inherited a kick ass spud gun from my friends, its rulz. Anyway I don't think they work good on cold days or something. Well we had nothing to do and we had nothing to shoot, so we went to my friends neighbors house and took some oranges. Carved mine down and we where shooting them over the highway. Anyway my friend didn't carve his or anything, he shoved a fat orange down the barrel. We had to use a broomstick to jam it down there. So, we had the spud gun on the ground, the barrel was facing up, and the broomstick was shoving the orange down the barrel.we still couldn't quite get it down all the way, so we grabbed the stick and took our feet off the ground. Yes, it worked, the orange is now down the barrel as far as we could get it. Because it was a cold day, we used more Butane than we usually did. I capped it off and gave it too my friend. He braced the end on his leg...
"Okay, here it goes!" he said, and he sparked it.

BOOM...

He fell on the ground. He was almost in tears.

Saying, "Ow! My leg! My leg!".

What happened was the cap (which was threaded so we had to screw it on) blew off the back, ramming it into his leg The spud gun shot backwards. Big lesson:
DON'T EVER FORCE ANYTHING BIGGER THAN THE BARREL, DOWN THE BARREL!!

Sound advice and story by: Danny Gauss

Flamin' TP

One night my friends, who shall be called Bryce and Shawn and my brother who shall be called Brock, were going to have some fun. I soaked a roll of toilet paper in gas, loaded it into my 4 inch gun, sprayed 6 seconds of hair spray, capped it and fired. That thing is the best fireball I've ever made! It lit up the whole backyard.

Then the neighbors got all pissed, "Blah blah blah, you're scaring my dogs"

Well, we kept shooting, getting the toilet paper stuck in trees and just burning stuff. It was really great. Now we do it all the time. I love burning stuff.
Story by Eric the funky man

Goofiness Was About

A few months ago during the summer, Eric and I were spending a nice calm evening in the woods behind his house launching potatoes. It was getting late, and with the passage of time and the buildup of excitement, we got kinda goofy. Well Eric did, and it was hilarious.

We were playing with the Spudzooka, which is known for its huge report, and large fireball following its launch. Eric was holding the gun, and it was fully loaded and ready to be fired. We were standing around for just a bit to let the neighbors calm down from our last shot. We were debating on the subject of our next target.

"Eric, where are you going to shoot?" I asked

With that he replied, "At the tree fort!!"

At that single instant he whirled around, spun The Spudzooka into the air, and blasted the side of the tree fort which rattled with the impact. All the while he wore this silly Mr. Bean-like smile on his face, and posed like a redneck. He shot off the spudzooka without flinching, and made a silly back country type laugh after he fired. The potato round disintegrated, sending the fragments of potato meat and juice all over us, and left a little dent in the middle of a big wet spot on the western side of the tree fort wall.

I don't recall what it was exactly that made me hunch over with laughter, and chuckle myself to tears, but I don't really care either. I think it may be because of the huge noise, the goofy attitude that Eric had while shooting, or the way the whole spectacle looked. It just made me laugh so hard. I slowly recovered, and looked up just in time to see Eric fire off a dry round on The Spudzooka, and it made a long gulping noise, which also was funny. So I went right back to laughing my ass off.

I remember laughing to myself at various times that night just thinking about it. What a night.

Story written by our very own Ben

And now for something completely different...
Cheese

Cheese is good; cheese is nice
In a spread or by the slice.
Cheese for me; cheese for you,
Rats love cheese, and hamsters, too.
Cheese, cheese, cheese!

Poem submitted by Chris Dowd


Some Cannon Horror Stories

Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 From: Motoman_1@msn.com

Hi, my name is Craig Alberts. I would like to pass on a story of my stupidity to any of you before you do something like this.... I first saw a potato gun about 5 years ago. (built by a guy from Idaho!)
Being a little curious, I built my own gun. I found a pvc tube that fit a standard golf ball. Barrel length was 48" and I used aerosol for fuel. I was able to shoot the ball 400 yards. I took it to a couple of courses to amaze my golf buddies.
This distance didn't impress me enough so I made a 7 foot barrel and was now able to shoot 800 yards. I was able to shoot a ball through a 2x4 from about 15 feet. I used this gun for about 6 months.
On the Fourth of July in 1995 I was using this gun with a couple of friends in a place near the Grand Coulee Dam here in Washington. When one of my friends smashed his beer can and threw it on the ground, I said we should shoot his can back at him for punishment for littering.(I had done this before and amazingly the ball only goes through one end of the can and the can goes flying about 200 yards with the ball in it) I picked up the can and straightened it out, but I couldn't get the can to stay on the end of the barrel.(I will note that I was NOT intoxicated) So I came up with the wacky idea that I would hold the can by the edges over the end of the barrel and just let the ball take it out of my grip (just writing this is making me sick to my stomach) My friend who was going to be the one who pulled the trigger asked if I was sure this would be OK? I assured him that I had done this before and it would be fine (I had never held on to the can before)
So after aiming the gun in the other friends direction, I yelled "Hey you litterbug, here's your stinking can back!" The trigger was then pulled and there was a loud explosion and my entire arm went numb, my pointer finger was gone from the middle knuckle out, my thumb was blown to bits and both myself and my buddy were completely covered with my blood!
Needless to say, I was quite shocked at what had just happened! I then felt like I was having the worst dream I have ever had! I then yelled to my friend who was at his truck "were going to the hospital!"
At this point I still had no feeling in my hand. We started our drive to find a hospital. The towns that we were near were small, so a large, well staffed hospital was out of the question. We stopped at a gas station and received directions to the only hospital for 50 miles.
At the hospital (this is a Hospital?) we were received with questions on how did this happen? Try explaining to a doctor how you modified a potato gun to shoot golf balls and ended up doing this and ruining your weekend, his weekend, and a good part of your life! I was in deep shock at this point and was still trying to rationalize what I had done to myself. The doctor and nurses were doing their best to keep me alive since I had lost so much blood and was in a very deep shock and my blood pressure dropping rapidly. After what seemed like hours, my wife and my brother arrived and this helped pull me back to reality.
The doctor said that my finger was blown into too many parts to be put back together,(they found only fragments) but my thumb was able to be mushed into a shape that resembles a thumb and stitched back together minus a lot of the bone. We were camping out for this three day weekend, but my brainiac imitation ruined everyone's weekend as my brother was forced to drive my van and trailer back home because I needed to get back home and my wife was too shook up to drive.
After about 4 months of constant doctors appointments, I was able to remove all the bandages and splints and start learning to live without being able to do things most of us take for granted. I am a Manufacturing Engineer by trade and this involves a lot of typing and nose picking! This incident is now looked back on as one of the stupidest things a person could ever do. I do not own the gun anymore, nor do I ever want to have one again in the future.
I do still have friends who bring out their spud guns to our get-togethers, but I still get a terrible feeling anytime I get around one.
In closing I would like to say that just being careful with these guns is not enough (since I was always careful) you must be prepared to face the music if something unusual happens when you are trying to do something "different" (such as using new objects to shoot) with one of these toys! I still have to explain to my new son how daddy's hand got hurt!

Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 From: avrial@ix.netcom.com
Be carefull with your toys,I heard of some fool trying to shoot a potato out of one bigger than mine using starting fluid(Either) and had it blow up on him! Lost his right eye and most of the flesh on the right side of his face.

My friend built a potato cannon and made a near fatal mistake! After he installed the barbecue starter, he looked down the barrel to test if the ark was sufficient, his word of advise is WAIT FOR THE GLUE TO DRY AND ALL THE FUMES DISSIPATE BEFORE TESTING THE IGNITOR! Needless to say, he almost blew his head off!

Here's something that happened to me with my cannon that really sucked. I was chasing some of my sisters friends around with it, even though I wasn't going to shoot them, and I only had the barrel loaded with a balled-up sock. So a couple of them jumped in our truck but before they could lock the doors I opened the door and had the barrel pointed right beside them (once again just to scare them). And I decided to fire the sock, seeing as how it was only a sock and couldn't do any real damage. Well it smashed the drivers side window out of the truck. Cost me $50 to get a window from a junkyard, and if I hadn't been able to find the window in a junkyard, it would have cost me $150. By the way I've been hit by a sock from one of these before, and it does hurt, but not really bad.