Hello all! This is my first post in the forum. I have included plans for, IMHO the best improvised weapon made from simple hardware store items. You can even travel with it checked in your baggage! Well the image pretty much sums it up. The barell is so short in the image because of the damn 500x500 upload rule. When putting the PVC peices together use PVC glue. For the Valve go to your nearest garage/Gas station and ask for one, they usually give them away for free. Drill a hole in the endcap a little smaller then the valve looks, then slip it through and it will automaticly lock in place and seal. To load the gun take the barell off and stick a paintball/spud/whatever into the end closest to the valve, then put the barell back on. if you want to shoot paint balls out of this use 1/2'' thin walled pipe. Close the valve, and give the pump about 20... pumps. When you are ready to fire open the valve as quick as you can. This design was built and tested for maximum power/effeciency -INk

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You should have saved the attachment in GIF format since this will usually yield the smallest files for images with few different colors. It was very noisy due to the JPEG compression, so I saved it as a black & white image.

Someone has to pay for the bandwidth, and we don't want to reduce the filesize of everbodys' images as we have other things to do.

Rhadon

The idea sounds legit, but i dont like the whole "open the valve as fast as you can" thing. I have a spud gun, made of pvc that didnt cost that much either. it was only 25 for all of the peices. the igniter is what is the most expeniseve part of that, 15 dollars. oh and painballs are to big for half inch, but they fit nicely in 3/4 (.75). paintballs are .68. 3/4 inch isnt as common though.

Heh, here's a little info you may like.

3/4" Sch40 is common and shitty for paintballs.

3/4" Sch40 is .81" ID
3/4" Sch80 is .72" ID Better but still sloppy.
3/4" CPVC is .68" ID perfect, you just put a CPVC male adapter on it and it'll fit into 3/4" NPT fittings.

Caesar - You are perfectly right, the "open the valve as fast as you can" think does sound sketchy, but with a little practice (and oil) a 3/4 inch metal valve can be flipped very fast. Mine has a barrel approx 95 cm long, however a diameter of more than 3 cm. I have fired a 300 gram projectile over 400 meters this way, with significant recoil. I use a compressor, with a schrader valve at the input (bicycle valve) and usually go up to at least 120 psi. The Schedule 40 PVC is rated at well over twice that, so a safefy margin is maintained.

Note- I would recommend a metal valve with threads for a pneumatic spudgun. 2 reasons 1) can be flipped faster and more easily lubricated, and 2) the threads needed to adapt the PVC to the metal allow changing of barrels. With well used plumbers tape on the threads, there is no leak at all, all the way up to 180 psi.

I have seen people use solenoid valves for their potato guns, but as of yet, I haven't managed to find one.