Pneumatic Potato Cannon

This site has info on a 20 foot long potato cannon my friend Chris and I built. You can also find news about a 40 foot long potato cannon I’m working on. Check out the video Chris made for an overview of Mark I. You can find more videos, construction photos and plans by clicking the tabs for Spudcannon Mark I and Spudcannon Mark II above.

I started working on - or rather finally picked up again - my plans for spudcannon mark II. So far there

I just finished uploading the pictures I’ve taken of Spudcannon 2 construction progress.

Today I finished the forward most 10 feet of the barrel. Lots of plywood support for the barrel, which will extend 30 feet from the air chambers. I’ll add pictures of the progress as soon as I get a new battery for my camera… erm.

I’ve finished one of the secondary air chambers and I’m in the process of making the main one. One of the main holdups was finding a way to trigger the chambers correctly (one is at -1ft, two is at 9ft and three is at 19ft from where the potato is).

The solution at this point is to fire them all at the same time and hope that the potato is going fast enough that little air escapes before the potato passes the last injector.

Update: This news post describes the original plans for Mark II. I’ve since redesigned it to use three valves all at the rear of the gun, which eliminates the timing issues I talk about above.