Small pirate cannon

Show us your pneumatic spud gun! Discuss pneumatic (compressed gas) powered potato guns and related accessories. Valve types, actuation, pipe, materials, fittings, compressors, safety, gas choices, and more.
saveitforparts
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Tue May 12, 2020 10:47 am

Some friends talked me into chipping in on a horrible pontoon boat from Craigslist, so I figured it needed a cannon.

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Youtube vid of building and testing it:



I still need to swap out the air hookup for a self-shutting version, otherwise I've just been keeping it hooked up to a 12v compressor.


Terrible boat for reference:

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mark.f
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Wed May 13, 2020 1:58 pm

Nice job, good to see some more of your youtube creations over here.

Only criticism I really have is against the two DWV fittings you have on there. The bell reducers are the only ones I can see (you can tell because all the pressure rated fittings have longer spigots than the reducers' sockets), so I don't think it would be too difficult to replace them if you chose to do so. (Don't take this too harshly either, my first pneumatic used a 3/4" sprinkler valve and DWV fittings as well!)

You could also modifiy the sprinkler valve to trigger pneumatically to get it to open more fully (and quickly), and still keep the "string actuated" nature of the cannon. Just leave the solenoid in place (or remove it and epoxy over the hole), and drill/tap a 1/8" or 1/4" NPT hole in the center of the lid to install a ball or blowgun valve to trigger it.

Good job again.

Those "unfortunate accidents" are the worst. They're against the rules to talk about here but me and my friend had such an accident one New Years but we were both unhardmed. :mrgreen:
saveitforparts
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Wed May 13, 2020 2:21 pm

I'll look into swapping those out, I try to use all pressure-rated stuff but I have an assortment of pipe hoarded and might not have been paying attention.

I've never done a pneumatic actuation on a sprinkler valve, will look into that. The electric system does seem to be a little laggy, hence the weird whistle at the end.
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