Blueberries.... the poor mans Paintball

[VH_man]

Well, i was at my friends house, and we decided to make a cannon........

only problem was we didnt have ammo. so, we used Blueberries! it makes a cool SPLAT on impact and i guess you could use them as paintballs... he shot me with it and it didnt hurt that much. but then, it was only a ball valve cannon at 50 PSI

[LGM]

I like to use small berries that I find as ammo, very funy and cheap if wild.

[spudthug]

lol cool but doesnt it stain the barrel????ill try it when i make my first pneumatic this week....ill post here and see how they do lol if i cqant find this i will just post another thing with pictures and stuff....happy spudding...i guess or something..

[LGM]

It doesn't stain, but my gun used a PVC ball valve and when I droped them down the barrel they would splat against it and gunk up the valve.

[Fnord]

How bout pitted olives filled with the staining agent of your choice? Then maybe a drop of wax on the end to seal it. Cheap and quick, plus if you shoot someone chances are they dont like olives anyway

[shud_b_rite]

I have used grapes before, they are fun for close range target practice

[rna_duelers]

Grapes are my main source of ammo.As I have grape vines at my house they are fun but they do hurt.Olives,they wouldn't splat....Well they would but more just penetrate skin.

About staining the barrel.How often do you look inside of your barrel for aesthetic reasons?

[joannaardway]

Stained barrels actually tend to shoot several m/s lower* than regularly cleaned and polished/cleaned barrels, because of the higher friction, and envitable build-up of nasties on the squished junk.

That's why I've got a barrel cleaning kit with a pull-through (made from copper olives and tough string), with scouring pads and rags in it to clean out dried/solidified, and loose/fresh messes respectively.

The "shinier" the appearance of the barrel, the lower the friction, and therefore the higher the muzzle velocity.
The inside of my copper barrels are kept in the cleanest and shinest condition I can, not for appearance, but for performance.

* I couldn't tell you an exact number, but depending on the case you might see power losses of a few percent.

[Hotwired]

I'd go with what Jo said.

Every dozen shots or so I wad up some fine steel wool and ram it down my barrel a couple of times. Dried potato juice creates a thin but rough crust inside the barrel (and on mine, around the breech screw threads)

Its not shiny as such, you can't really put enough force on the inside to get a shine but it is very smooth and free of any bits.

[schmanman]

i dont really ever clean my barrel. of course, a lot of times, the potatoes
still have skin on them, and even when they dont, the barrel is aluminum, so I take it off and hose it out every week or so in the summer.

and steel slugs and tape wrapped projectiles are self cleaning, and, in fact, they clean the barrel!

[joannaardway]

The pull-through I use has to be done with two hands it's so tight in the barrel. It easily exerts enough force to polish (and in fact can - exceptionally well)

A torch is also kept around to inspect down the barrel. It's worth checking to see how well your cleaning has gone.

A lot of you would be surprised how dirty the barrel can get after only light use of vegetable ammo - it's worth occassionally doing a light clean. Just don't use toilet paper if you try, because it shreds on the way down the barrel. Keep it to tough rags, scourers and other such objects.

[BC Pneumatics]

What a waste of delicious blueberries!