SpudFiles

yes sparkplugs work great

thanks ill look into it some more

see my dad will only let me build a spudzooka if i present full plans and ideas and that it will work well and safe

Hi,

If you get a capacitor, like 47000 microF, and put that in parallel with the battery, it will be able to deliver 10's of amps for some milliseconds.

From the battery / steel wool combo you will have a couple of not too thin wires to the steel wool, one of them through a pushbutton switch that can handle some current.

That should ignite the steel wool, even without a camera flash circuit.



Regards
Soren

Looks like steel wool would work, but you would have to replace the batteries often cause its like a short-circuit..

This might work better with batteries like C an D cells for higher current.. Once I was experimenting with homopolar motor designs and my D cell vaporized a piece of copper wire.

Edit: Heh, dongfang beat me to the higher-current idea..oh well

If you're after more guranteed ignition than a BBQ igniter, stop messing around with the plain steel wool. I have held an unlit running torch against a wad of burning steel wool and it didn't ignite. It is, however, capable of lighting something like gunpowder mixed with a binder or KNO3 and sugar. A couple strands coated with the flamable dope would be very reliable and with aligator clips somewhere like an endcap they would be easy to replace.

LGM wrote:If you're after more guranteed ignition than a BBQ igniter, stop messing around with the plain steel wool. I have held an unlit running torch against a wad of burning steel wool and it didn't ignite. It is, however, capable of lighting something like gunpowder mixed with a binder or KNO3 and sugar. A couple strands coated with the flamable dope would be very reliable and with aligator clips somewhere like an endcap they would be easy to replace.

This is probobly because the steel wool consumes alot of oxygen, and wasn't allowing any for the combustion of the torch fuel. The sparks from burning steel would be enough as the origional flint-and-steel fire-starters used real flint to chip off tiny burning bits of steel off of a block. The "flint" firestarters found today use steel to flick off tiny pieces of a chunk of highly combustible ferrous compound called "ferrocium".

But your flammable dope idea is very good and would probobly work quite well for those that can't get ignition off of plain steel wool. Good idea.

If one were to dip part of the SW in gas before firing, that would probably increase the chances of ignition. The steel wool I have been using doesn't spark, maybe that's why the torch didn't light. I have been using it as an extender for homemade black match which gave me the idea.

if you can get rockets take them apart and add the blackpowder to the steel wool should ignite every time

So much trouble for just ignition? And it still doesn't solve the problem of changing the wool out every shot...

Just use a BBQ lighter. I am interested in this spark plug idea though...

My best friend had built a combustion cannon With a spark plug anda Big BBQ Ignitor and it shot all most. the chamber was 4 in pvc pipe 2 1/2 ft long the barrel was 2.5 3ft long *that thing could go far *

why dont use a car/moped coil ? gives nice sparks.

yes use a car ignition coil with a sparkplug!!!!!! or for a huge gun use a largish tesla coil with the end of the secondary in the chamber should ignite every time!!!! or take wire wind a huge coil take the ends and put them in the chamber connect a 9V battery to it via a push button switch and when you release the button it should spark across the ends of the coil!!!