SpudFiles

I'm making a coax and was wondering what everyone else did to to keep the barrel inside of the cannon balanced.

I made one before, but the barrel was thick enough and short enough that it didn't bend.

The one that I am currently making uses about four feet of two inch pipe inside the chamber alone. And as you can understand, it bends inside the chamber and that creates problems. LOTS of problems. My first ever coax was a disaster in too many ways to list. It was five feet of 1 1/2 inch barrel. It would shoot oddly, not shoot at all, and eventually it got old and broke easily when I cut it up and was about to turn it into scrap pipe (most likely from all the wear of bending).

So enough of me complaining, what do you guys use to balance it out? I have some rather lengthy and troublesome alternatives, but I am hoping there's an easier way to do this other than cutting out a piece of wood and inserting it to hold the barrel steady in the chamber.

Use your imagination, you could practically epoxy or glue anything in the barrel. I would personally cut 3 nails to size then glue them onto the end of the barrel that needs stabilizing.

you mean centred (??)

use serach function... there are hundreds of coax here

other than cutting out a piece of wood and inserting it to hold the barrel steady in the chamber.

what's so 'bad' about it ?

barrel support or glue something really stiff tha wont bend to it

You need a barrel support.

Make a disk that just fits inside your chamber.

Your barrel should just slide through a hole in the center.

Carve this disk to resemble a radiation sign, leaving a little meat to hold things together.

I place them at 2/3 - 3/4 of the chamber length.

Something more or less like this. ( The effect, if not the execution.)

Edit: Forgot to mention, you MUST secure the support to either the barrel (that's what I do) or the chamber. (solvent weld, solder, epoxy, etc.)

I made a barrel support for my coax by taking a 3" to 1.5" reducer bushing and literally sawing off the back face of it...you can see it here..



...looks like a 5 spoked wheel inside there. It then fit perfectly in 3" coupler I was using. It's all very tricky to cement/glue up though. I had to use epoxy on some of the joints because PVC cement cured way too fast to get everything lined up.

I stuck some of my Bro's Knex on my copper coax's barrel

Use your imagination, you could practically epoxy or glue anything in the barrel. I would personally cut 3 nails to size then glue them onto the end of the barrel that needs stabilizing.

This is pretty much what I planned on doing, I was just gonna get out some nice, thick, machine screws and screw them into the back of the barrel.

you mean centred (??)

use serach function... there are hundreds of coax here

Quote:
other than cutting out a piece of wood and inserting it to hold the barrel steady in the chamber.
what's so 'bad' about it ?

Nothing really, it's just that I really don't have the time or decent materials for that to be an "economical" option.

@gippeto~ Thnx,That's pretty much what I was describing, but I was gonna suse a piece of plywood. I just wanted to hear some supportive feedback about using that method.

@starman~ yeah, I pretty sure I 've seen a design like that before(it was probably yours) but I wasn't sure what it was, I went to my local hardware store and couldn't figure out what it had been.

I know these arn't the sizes you have but maybe it will work for you.

For my 2" chamber and 1" barrel coax, I an endcap had my father take it to work and on the lathe drill a 1 1/4" hole so the barrel fit snuggly. This is the end part. Then for a barrel support a took a 1 1/5 to 1 " bushing adapter, sremmeled out the lip on the inside, took it to the ban saw and cut a pice about 1/4 of the total size out of it. then I glued the 3/4 of the bushing to the barrel and then the bushing inside the chamber. This works well because it is a diaphram valve gun, and the clearense that I cut out is larger than the area between the valve and the barrel when it is open. maybe you can do something similar.

2" barrel eh? are you making a gernade launcher by any chance?

SSSSSSHHHHHH!!!! I'm working on something new, hush hush.

I used a reducer to bridge the difference, and then sliced the reducer up into well,..... pizza parts.
3 small parts were glued on the barrel and then it was all done!