How did you all get into Spudding?

[Redcoat]

Hi all,

I am just curious as to how you all got into the awesome hobby that is spudding. Was it just for leisure or self-defence.

Well i my case it was the latter.In my suburb there are a bunch of republicans(opposed to the queen) who go around lighting peoples mailboxes and stuff.Well me and my friend (were monarchist) went around and lit their mailboxes on fire.They didn't know who it was but it made them more angry.
But they didn't know who it was(luckily) well oneday my mailbox got done and so i looked on the internet for stuff like "homemade cannon" and homemade rocket launcher".And it sent me straight to spudtech and then later to here.

i was intrigued and i manufactured my first one which i aptly named the "pacifier".It worked so well that i got into it signed up on spudfiles and am now obsessed with it as my number one hobby.

Like to know how you all got into it (just curious)

cheers,
Happy Spuddin'

[Thursto]

Ahh well for me it all started when i was about maybe 7, i was making one of those little glove guns, then i got into homemade tennis ball combustion gun, which never worked, then i used to make pneumatic cannons, using dodgy parts, ad silicone and lots and lots of tape, and made a fair few different designs, then i found this site, and learnt how to really make them, with the right parts and all. and previously i used to look on http://www.rotteneggs.com but not so much now. lighting letter boxes on fire ?? i think thats hilarious, lol. why not blow there letter boxes up instead with some big amnation (not sure if i spelt that right, btw i live in aus, and im very tired atm, sorry if my spelling is bad) or some fire works and what not. and now ive learnt about inline BBMG and clouds, now all i want is a aircompressor but my dad wont let me have one, "he says there is nowhere to store one" yet 3 days later he goes out and bys a lawn edger, and a hedge trimmer and what not .

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

You little juvenile delinquents you!

I discovered early in my life that I had a distinct predilection for penetration, and since the tools required to blow large holes in stuff weren't readily available, i was going to have to make my own.

The interwabs, some sections of pipe, a bicycle inner tube and a tube of Araldite later,

[jrrdw]

Seen the Spudfiles link on cannonfuse.com, said to myself...self, that looks cool! Lets check it out, came here looked around and was hooked. Thanks Spudfiles.

[pyromaniac]

Mopherman made a ghetto gun useing the valve from a nerfgun goke bottle and a coke bottle. It was duckt taped togeter and spuer glued for an air tight seal.

6 monthes later mopher made one out of pvc with another coke bottle chamber/ while he was over we went to the hardware store made another and got hooked.

since then i have made one working sprinkler cannon. One the was a bucket o crap. Like 3 cannons made from spare parts. 1 was a smallish conbustion otehrs were pnuematic.

Mopher and are hope fully going to start the 4 inch co axial(sp?).

[goathunter]

A suggestion from my uncle to make boaters more aware of no wake zones They were messing up is fishing.
I never actually did this but it got the spud rolling to say.I later built my first basic combustion for a school project.Comparing hand thrown water balloons to cannon fired.From that point I took a little break for 2 rs. or so, then I got into scenario paintball.I figured I'd try my hand at building a launcher to simulate taking out tanks.And that's where I'm at today.The designated LAW/shotgun player for my paintball team.

[dongfang]

I needed something else to think of while working on my M. Sc. thesis (in Computer Science).

One day i friend showed me a Danish page construction plans for a really primitive sewer pipe orange gun. I tried. The pipes wouldn´t glue together (PP); the gun wouldn´t ignite, it fell apart readily, the fan (I reinvented the chamber fan before atumbling across Spudtech, Spudfiles, Latke etc.) kept coming loose ....

I love technical challenges, and aaah there was one. As soon as the thesis was handed in, mach 1.

(now I´m back with stuff that won´t seal and hoses that kink and block when getting hot from inflation and piles of other things done wrong .. ok I guess I will learn some practical pneumatics soon, too.)

Soren

[spudthug]

I got started on our camping trip. We buy cracker bombs for 4th of july and we lgiht them, throw them in a tube, and throw a tennisball on top.
When it goes off u cant see that tennis ball for a good 15 seconds.. so after the trip i remembered that my dads freind had a combustion gun the last year. So i wanted to launch tennis balls out of a combustion gun. i soon figured out that tennisball barrels werent readily availiable. i was searching for potato gun plans and i could not find anything. I did find minis and then i found this site (luckily i found this site before i spent $110 on a basic combustion cannon...)

now im hooked on guns and i have made a bunch of guns since then!

[spud yeti]

I got into it when I was looking on the net for plans to make a go kart a couple of years ago and came across burntlakte.com with their bb guns. I found it really exciting, and later joined here, but never really made many guns. Then one day my friend brought up the topic of paintball guns and how expensive they are, and I decided to make one.... and here I am today!

btw, nice creature jack, I have one too. I'll take a photo of him later and put it up. His name is Ettian, hes our band maskot

[hi]

i originally wanted to build a bb gun, like a pump action bb gun. i wound up building the world's worst ball valve .75 caliber pneumatic with a 5 foot barrel that leaked terribly. i few weeks later my cousin showed me what a combustion was and i was hooked.

[noname]

It all started back in '04, when I was walking along, just minding my own business, and potato came out of nowhere and knocked me unconsious. All I thought was....REVENGE!
That's not true.

I'm into weird paintballing stuff, like modified my current gun instead of buying a new one, making my own barrel, making my own grenades instead of paying like $5 for one of them, stuff like that. I wanted something to launch my grenades, looked around, saw a PVC "grenade launcher" and decided to make my own. I built 4 or 5 ball valve pneumatics, then a few more sprinklers, then a piston or two, then a couple more sprinklers, and then some weird other crap, and then a soda can mortar; my first combustion.

[VH_man]

i got the book Backyard Ballistics.............

thats all it took me. from the first click of the igniter to the first FFTT of the first ballvalve pneumatic, i was launching random objects out of plumbing supplies.............

[Flying_Salt]

Once we were getting lectured about car engines and how it works, and the guy mentioned how a piston works like a spud gun; "You spray in the WD-40, light it and there goes the potato". That was about the only thing that I picked up. I went home and started searching around. I then built a hairspray combustion and thought it was amazing. I got my plans from advancedspuds.com, and from there I found this site.

[Hotwired]

Self defence

Maybe if they don't know you only have one shot and it takes half a minute to reload...

Anyways.

I don't fully know how I started.

I often make odd and unusual things and I think it began when I was making bottle rockets at about 11-12ish.

Get hold of a empty drinks bottle, half fill with water, invent a rubber bung to jam a footpump head into the mouth and pump til pressure overcomes the friction and it blasts off.

By some wierd lateral thinking I then got hold of a steel broomhandle, hot glued and melted a plastic garden hose fitting to one end to hold a bike valve (the metal tip of a glue gun is very handy ^_^) and created a slide valved barrel at the other end.

The way it worked was you pumped it up and the short (30cm?) barrel tube, held back by string against the pressure was pushed back into the broomhandle, letting air into a side hole, blasting out a pencil some 30m into the air.

That evolved to a garden spray attachment melted to the broomhandle chamber to replace the sliding barrel valve which worked to 100psi with continual hot glue repairs every 10 shots or so because leaks would spring up.

One day I went into college and a friend of mine had brought in a simple over-under copper ballvalve cannon in his bag which spectacularly deformed an AA battery so I made one too and was amazed at the results.

It would have stopped there if I hadn't randomly noticed the UKSGC forum competition as I idly browsed the net, offering free parts for the best air cannon design. Lots of research and building later....

....and I ended up here

[Redcoat]

wow .It's interesting to see how you al got herer.mosst of you seem to hav ebeen looking for other stuf and then you came here or spudtech or burntlatke. oh god is tat my speling i just oke up so im missing keys here and there.Well i just have to add one thing.The other thing that got me looking for potato cannons was Mythbusters with the chicken cannon(which actually exists.)and tried to make one right after that episode but it just failed.But i kept trying.....i hope.