So some explanation with the name of this project. We decided one day that video games held no interest to us, well the internet died, so we decided to hit up the local hardware shop and go to work. We had seen the efforts of some of our friends in making what they liked to call a potato cannon, a spud gun or tater tosser. all of their efforts seemed, what can I say, adorable. small form factor, push fit and some tape. We decided that we could do much better. So we decided on PVC drainage pipe for the barrel, then some even wider pipe for what we affectionately called the combustion chamber. This effort was in fact a mark 2 on this. Me and Saf decided one day to duck tape 2 pringles tubes together, craft knife a hole in the bottom, stick a BBQ lighter in and make a tennis ball launcher. It worked… once and my lord did it make an almighty noise. It set off with an almighty boom and launched the tennis ball about 5 meters. then we couldnt get it to work again. Something to do with attempting to contain a fireball inside a thinly lined cardboard tube. Note that I was voulentold that I should fire it. This happens a lot in my friend group.

Back to the hardware shop and we buy all of the fittings and some contact cement, then to the workshop for assembly. It really was as easy as pushing the fittings together, using the contact cement to glue it all up, drilling one hole into the combustion chamber to stick a BBQ lighter through, gluing that into place and then testing it.

Testing the project was a little harder than it seemed, all in all Betsy was about 2.4 meters long and had a very wide barrel. This meant that none but the beefiest potatoes would do for launching and we had to be selective. This is where we made our first trip to a supermarket for supplies. We gathered a whole shed load of veg to sling up the garden and some propellant. The propellant that we chose was some horrendous smelling deodorant that we still have a can or two of kicking around. So we came up with a procedure. Step one, load the projectile, step 2 unscrew the cap and fill then replace the cap, step 3, your mates leg it and make you pull the trigger. I will see if i can find a video to upload of Betsy firing. eventually we did make some quality of life modifications, we cut down the length to 2 meters so we could actually transport the thing, then we sharpened the barrel so that we could custom cut the potatoes on the fly and we painted it black and green, because nvidia needed a spud gun.

Now I have prattled on for ages about this thing but what I haven’t explained is the name, now having the friends that I have we showed it off and all had a go, even to the head of a certain organisation that will remain nameless to protect the guilty. Now with the sketchy maths that we did to estimate mussel velocity if we called it a spud gun a lovely policeman could come round and take it away as a section V firearm. So we came up with a fantastic idea. If we instead called it a single cycle pulse jet then the wonderful bobby cant take it away. Genius right?