This weekend!!
Potato cannon
- Thread starter Mungo
- Start date
I believe they tried to make it a legal requirement for anything that could be made into a firearm would need a license.
Until it was pointed out that every single plumber and diy shop would need a RFD license.
I will confirm.
About a dozen or so years ago I was at motorbike rally in Holland (MC de Kleppenjaegers). A Danish rider arrived towing what looked like a smaller military artillery piece.....
For fun, he set it up and proceeded to fire orange at a 45 gallon drum.... impressive!!! they exploded on impact and showered some people with vitamin C
.... he then put small, full, beer cans into the chamber and fired them..... it got scary at that point, as they went straight through the drum!
I wa told the following year, when I asked if he was bringing it again, that he was stopped by the German Civil Police (GCP) on his way home and that it was seized as a firearm.
For fun, he set it up and proceeded to fire orange at a 45 gallon drum.... impressive!!! they exploded on impact and showered some people with vitamin C
.... he then put small, full, beer cans into the chamber and fired them..... it got scary at that point, as they went straight through the drum!I wa told the following year, when I asked if he was bringing it again, that he was stopped by the German Civil Police (GCP) on his way home and that it was seized as a firearm.
All good fun, but I can't see it being legal. It's essentially a muzzle loading firearm. Projectile, burning propellant, considerably more than 12ft-lbs of energy even if you disregard the fact it's powered by an explosion. I wonder if it's ever made court?
I made a basic musket when I was a kid, 12-13 years old at a guess, from hydraulic pipe threaded to take a bolt as a breech plug. I'd guess about 3ft long. I drilled a small angled hole in the tube at the plug end and used to use fishing line to pull 100 paper caps taped to a party popper charge down the bore and through the hole. The string fitted through, the charge didn't. On top of that went a Barnett steel catapult bearing patched with a piece of rag. I'd hold the pipe tight, sight down it like a shotgun and pull the string. I never found out what would stop it, it smashed straight through an offcut of 9x2 so I tried a railway sleeper. All in my back garden, all went through the fence never to be seen again. Thankfully I guess they must have stopped somewhere safe because I would have heard about it otherwise, and the breech plug didn't fail because it was pointing pretty much straight at my eye!
Folk say "kids these days!" but kids in those days weren't exactly innocent either!
I made a basic musket when I was a kid, 12-13 years old at a guess, from hydraulic pipe threaded to take a bolt as a breech plug. I'd guess about 3ft long. I drilled a small angled hole in the tube at the plug end and used to use fishing line to pull 100 paper caps taped to a party popper charge down the bore and through the hole. The string fitted through, the charge didn't. On top of that went a Barnett steel catapult bearing patched with a piece of rag. I'd hold the pipe tight, sight down it like a shotgun and pull the string. I never found out what would stop it, it smashed straight through an offcut of 9x2 so I tried a railway sleeper. All in my back garden, all went through the fence never to be seen again. Thankfully I guess they must have stopped somewhere safe because I would have heard about it otherwise, and the breech plug didn't fail because it was pointing pretty much straight at my eye!
Folk say "kids these days!" but kids in those days weren't exactly innocent either!
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