[Potato gun blast]
[Friend] I didn’t get it launching.
[Potato gun blast]
[Friend] I don’t even know where that went.
[Friend] We probably need less hairspray.
[Zack] That one didn’t go quite as far as the other one.
[Blast sounds]
Alright so to make your own potato gun we need an end cap, we need a piece that the
end cap screws into, you need a foot long combustion chamber. You have to have the piece
that connects the chamber to the barrel. And then my barrel’s going to be 3-3 ½ feet
long. I haven’t quite cut it to size yet. Get the ABS cement and a barbeque igniter.
The reason I’m using the ABS is because it’s stronger than PVC. When PVC breaks
it kind of shatters into lots of different pieces. ABS kind of doesn’t shatter so it
works better for the potato gun.
You also need 2 screws that we’re going to drill in-between this. This is a 4 foot,
no sorry, a 4 inch diameter pipe. So make sure your screws are at least 2 and ½ inches
so they kind of cross over each other when they’re inside of that.
It also helps to have some little screws drilled inside of here so that when you’re pushing
things down in the barrel it doesn’t go all the way through into the chamber. So you
stick like a little screw that sticks out probably about halfway through in there and
that just stops anything from entering the chamber itself.
So what I’m going to do right now is I’m going to take some sandpaper and just kind
of rough up the insides where the glue is going to go just so it has better sticking
power.
I’m taking this glue right here and I’m covering it from the outside of this and the
inside of that. I’m doing both surface areas. And then as I put it in, I kind of twist it
into place. So I make sure to get the glue on every single part of it.
Okay, all of the parts are glued together. I’ll let it sit and dry a little bit before
we put the screws in through the combustion chamber.
So I have the barbeque igniter. I connected the wires to the bottom and the side, and
so now every time I click this, it will snap across there. Let’s see if we can get the
light off. Now we’re going to attach those to the screws on the side of the gun itself.
That side and that side. And the spark will be transferred across the screws instead.
So we have the wires wrapped around the screw. I also put electrical tape all over the igniter
as well so I don’t get zapped and it holds the connections in place.
As far as the screws go, they’re just screwed in over the top just like that. So they’re
pretty close together. I’m going to snap this a few times. So you can kind of see a
spark there. You can also see that other screw down there where the barrel changes to the
2 inch. That’s what’s going to keep the, you know, whatever you’re launching, a potato,
golf ball, whatever, and keep it from coming inside the combustion chamber.
There you have it. A potato gun.
[Blast sound]
Oh there it is, there it is! Boom!