Water Cannon for a River Raft?

Build a homemade water gun or water balloon launcher and tell us about it.
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KillerToFu
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 12:51 am

Water Cannon for a River Raft?

Post by KillerToFu » Mon Jun 14, 2010 1:07 am

Hi everyone, in 3 weeks my friends and I take our annual trip down the battenkill river on a home made raft for the 4th of july, this is our 7th year taking the trip and unfortunately will probably be the last time, the majority of us will be leaving now that most of us are done with college. This year we are going pretty big with our raft in celebration of the last trip and for some reason dressing up like pirates. (Back story, we want to yell "were here for your beer and you wenches!" as much as possible and "whats a pirate say?" which hopefully they answer "arr" which we drink to...if not we tell them arr and drink anyways :D ) Thought it would be awesome to put a working pvc water cannon onto our raft as it would go with our theme. Was hoping someone could point me in the direction of one that would be most practical to build for this, basically the idea was to have something that shot a big blast of water maybe 15-20 feet to soak any of the unfortunate tire tubers and other home made rafters. Thanks for the help everyone.

(And if anyone knows of a way we could stick a hose into the river and sifin the water directly from the river that would be awesome, if not were not to good to just refill the chambers, we will be on a river after all.)

Fredcompany
Posts: 198
Joined: Thu May 13, 2010 7:09 pm

Re: Water Cannon for a River Raft?

Post by Fredcompany » Mon Jun 14, 2010 4:04 pm

If you had the materials, you could make a MOARC (search the site)
But it looks like you need something smaller.
All I can think of at the moment is Supercannon II (again, search the site)

I hope this helps
I'm a dude

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martianshark
Posts: 689
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2009 10:24 pm

Re: Water Cannon for a River Raft?

Post by martianshark » Mon Jun 14, 2010 6:40 pm

The Steam Machine is best for this. You can draw water right from the river, and they quite easily get 30 ft or more. If you want something more powerful, I would suggest an APH with an intake tube instead of a reservoir.

Fredcompany
Posts: 198
Joined: Thu May 13, 2010 7:09 pm

Re: Water Cannon for a River Raft?

Post by Fredcompany » Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:04 pm

How could I forget the APH?!?!?!?!?
I'm a dude

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C-A_99
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Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 11:09 pm

Re: Water Cannon for a River Raft?

Post by C-A_99 » Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:04 pm

If you do go with a piston pumper, find a way to mount it to the boat. Otherwise unless you're Chuck Norris, you won't get that much range out of it. The APH is a good cheap solution, better than most piston pumpers (especially since it doesn't have to be dipped into the water like a syringe, which takes time from your shooting) and can also be mounted.

Ideally, if you can't go with a MOARC or something fancy with an engine, I'd suggest trying to improvise a pump system. The idea has been thrown around; have two bike foot pumps next to each other for fast charging. This is very easy to do for air pumps but for water pumps (which most water guns require), it will be tricky to do but modification of a foot bike pump may be possible.

An air pump system however, can be useful for water balloon launchers. However, dead water balloons are an environmental problem to deal with and I don't know if it's a good idea to go about having naval wars with WBL's.

Either way, the APH (or a variation of it) would be the best cheap choice because you don't have to worry about slightly dirty water damaging PVC, and it's very easy to have a dip tube run along the boat into the water to act as the reservoir. What you end up with is an air pressure blaster with an infinite water supply, and that water supply doesn't weigh you down. Building a foot pump system would merely be an improvement on the APH, adapting it as a turret specifically for boat usage, but it won't be as useful for non-turret applications unless a regular hand pump can be connected onboard.

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