<-Eric Ben->

Storyline by Ben Patten

During the mid-summer months of 1994, my uncle brought me my first spud gun. He told me that my clever cousins had created it a few years ago, and had gone down the line of creation with the thing, and had bigger and badder stuff at home. With that, "The Spud Gun" was bequeathed onto me, and an era began. Spud Works does not promote drinking...a lot.

Ben's Cousin John

I fiddled around with the thing, and since it was extremely easy to use, I had fun. My brother and I would spend afternoons in the backyard with a bag of spuds shooting the picnic table that had been tipped over for target practice. I marveled at how such a wonderfully clever little device could be so simple to build and maintain. I tell you, I didn't wash the thing until the threads of the end cap were mashed and mangled (SMUCKER'S JAMS AND JELLIES). To say the least, I fell in love with the thing.

The period of time in which I played with the spud gun was long. I couldn't put it down. The trees in my backyard had a starchy paste ring about 5 feet from the ground all around each trunk. The picnic table was destroyed, having been pommeled with potatoes until its nails creaked out. I needed something new.

I took my spud gun over to Eric's house one day, to show him just what it could do. Eric hadn't seen one before, and I loved the look on his face as the first round flew loudly into a nearby ply'ood board. I recall his astonishment, standing with his mouth agape, and muttering useless phrases-until of course he uttered the first few spattled words that birthed what would become Spud Works: "I have to make one of those!"

As time flew by, and ideas piled up, the Spud Works became real. We found web pages on the net, and wrote E-mails to as many sites as we could find. We became true spud gunners. We wrote in our beliefs and ideas to other Spud Gun fans, and found this new "cult", as it were, and with that a new home. We were not aware at this wildly popular new hobby, which included many new ideas that we had not seen before. I recall one lil' diddy, dubbed "The Death Ray", simply blew our minds. Great job, and a yank-of-the-hair salute!!!-Crazy Bastards!!!!!

Now, one might wonder what it is exactly that makes us hooligans "Spud Gunners". Why are we so special? What is it exactly? It is something that you see clearly once you are a part of it. It is something that can be described best with one simple thing. I symbolize it with the smell of the chamber of a spud gun right after a good firing in which are mixed potatoes, hair spray, burnt residue, and starchy goodness.
IT IS THE LOVE OF THAT SMELL,
THE LOVE OF ALL OF IT,
THAT MAKES YOU A TRUE SPUD GUNNER.
However, if you are to become a TRUE Spud Gunner, you must also have one more trait. You must also live with the mind set of clever tinkering that is involved with making the spud guns. Now, inside of that, there exists a brainstorming excitement involved with the upgrading process of your spud gun collection. I will sum it up in simple terms though, and its the smell mostly.

So go forth and spud with all your heart, and remember what you are really doing: Shooting Spuds out of a PVC assembly at incredible speeds and using hair spray to do it. Its still amazing, even to us Veteran Spud Gunners, and we're hooked for life. Happy Spudding.

Let's get technical

Ben first got me involved in this wonder of science and ballistics. He had the simple gun design 3" to 1.5". It was tiny though, but it did pack a punch! First time I saw it shot off was in my backyard at a 1/4 piece of ply-wood. Vaporized potato, I was hooked.

We now have a large artillery of starchy shooters. From the Zookenies to the Spudzooka, we've got a bunch. My first gun is The Spudinator. I took Ben's basic design and raised it to the next power. His gun had a 6" X 3" combustion chamber, hmm... twice the size, twice the power, right? The Spudinator 12" X 3" combustion chamber. His gun, 18" X 1.5" barrel, the Spudinator... 36" X 1.5". As an added touch it's got a 3" X 1.5" reducer backwards on the end. (Pics to come!) This bad boy stand a full 4' tall. We equate it to a shotgun. We've since made 2 more Spudinators ready for dual gunning action.

My next endeavor was to make what we all really want, a bazooka. Using all sorts of adapters, reducers and what-not for the innards, a 4" pipe coating. The Spudzooka has a 4" combustion chamber and a 2" barrel (though it looks like 4" due to casing). (Pics to come!) Remember that 1/4" ply-wood board target we vaporized the potato with?? The Spudzooka has successfully blasted it in half. This creation has a mega recoil and a deafening report.

Although theses guns are powerful, we needed something REALLY easy to transport, something that was tiny and light, something that you could fit in a briefcase, bring to work, and impress the boss with. The Zookenies were born. These tiny mites have a 2" combustion chamber and a 3/4" barrel. We've made a couple of these and best of all they only cost about FIVE BUCKS to make! (Yes, pics to come!)

As soon as we can get our hands on a decent sized tank, pneumatics here we come!

Stay Tuned, more info on the way!