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Safety!

Safety first! Anyone interested in building or buying a potato cannon (spud gun) must know that there are risks involved in it. Just like playing football, mountain biking or hunting, you can get seriously injured or killed if you do not hold safety as your #1 concern.

Rule #1: Never shoot any person, place, or property without permission and the proper safety guidelines.

This is a no-brainer. If you are into spud guns you should know how powerful they can be. A fastball at 100 MPH would most likely kill a major league baseball player or seriously injure him. A well constructed aerosol spud gun can reach speeds of up to 400 MPH, take this into consideration if you ever thought of shooting your drunken buddy.

Now there is an exception to this rule, air cannons fall under a totally different category and can be safely regulated to shoot paintballs under 250-300 FPS (which is the safe speed limit of paintballs from regular guns).

Rule #2: Don't shoot in urban areas, destroy other peoples property.

This is also another no-brainer. If you want to avoid getting sued, being arrested and charged with numerous felony weapons violations you should only fire a spud gun in an area where you would shoot a regular firearm (pistol, rifle). Even if spud guns are not classified as a firearm by federal law, the restrictions may vary from state to state. In some states combustion cannons are banned from urban and suburban cities and the use of one against another person/property holds the same penalties as using a firearm

Most common injury: Getting Burned

I have heard this story time and time again so i thought it should be displayed first. Most people who build a spud gun build the combustion type which uses an electric or flint spark as the ignition and a flammable vapor such as aerosol can spray as the fuel. More often than not the shooter eventually sprays too much or too little propellant into the combustion chamber and has the curiosity of a cat to peek inside whle testing the ignition. DO NOT LOOK INTO A CHAMBER WHILE TESTING YOUR IGNITION! Sometimes its the ignition or the chamber was "flooded" or too rich on fuel which will cause the cannon to misfire.

What to do in case of a misfire: Check your ignition, purge combustion chamber, fuel cannon more precisely.

I can not stress this enough, Don't open the chamber and peek in to see if your ignition is working. Open the chamber and let it vent out for at least two minutes, or however long it should take depending on how much fuel was actually sprayed in. Once the cannon is no longer full of flammable vapors hold the cannon at arms length with the chamber end facing the sky test your ignition several times (test it at least 5 times or more). This is done to ensure that you are not going to get burnt while you check the ignition. If there is still fuel left in the chamber it will harmlessly flare up in the air for a few seconds.

Possibilities soon to come in the future: Custom all-in-one fan controller box AND stungun ignition. Modified propane attachments, custom meter pipes and valve systems, automatic solenoid valves, portable and onboard propane setup. Ammunition section: rubber bouncy balls, plastic balls (high density), injection molded ammunition, rifled slugs, pvc rockets, breech loading barrels, bolt action barrels. More air cannons and air cannon accessories. Piston valves, ball valves, sch. 80 unions, precut burst disks, safety blowoff valves, flow regulators, check valves, custom air gauges.

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