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Build a homemade water gun or water balloon launcher and tell us about it.
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oddist
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New User/Question

Post by oddist » Mon May 21, 2007 12:51 pm

Hi folks!

My name's Patrick...always wanted to build a homebrew air-pressure water weapon...now I found some motivation.

Y'see, my buddies and me have an annual picnic and one of the highlights is a water-gun war. Well, one buddy is bragging about how he pre-ordered the biggest, baddest new Super Soaker direct from Hasbro. I must say, it looks impressive in person.

His former model (big, long sucker) had a BIPOD fer pete's sake. This new one holds one gallon of water, had great range, big blast or small stream, yadda yadda...

Well, not to be outdone, I am planning to build the Air Pressure Homemade as featured on the main site. I have a question: what's in the backpack? That's the one part I didn't see many details for (unless I missed it)

Anybody try using a 5-gallon bucket for a water resivoir? (I mean, just strap it on a backpack frame and blow 'em away <evil, evil GGG>

Thanks, and keep up the great work!!!!

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Silence
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Post by Silence » Mon May 21, 2007 8:45 pm

Welcome to the forums! Great to have your around, sounds like you're interested and keen on building! By the way, what timeframe are you looking at to build this water gun?

The Monster XL (the bipod water gun) and the HydroBlitz (this year's massive soaker, held like a minigun) are quite underpowered for their size. Oh, and one more question - what type of fighting do you guys do? Sounds like soakfest, in which you just soak each other as much as possible. Other types are one-hit kill (1HK; players who are hit are eliminated), one-hit score (1HS; eliminated players may respawn), capture-the-flag with one-hit score, and various scenario games.

If it's a soakfest, output and capacity, with decent range, might be important. If it's something else, you probably want more range and slightly limited output.

Also consider building constant pressure homemades (CPHs). You'll have to order latex rubber tubing (LRT) from a site like McMaster-Carr, which ships from New Jersey, but you get constant power and they're fairly easy to make. There are no full articles yet, probably not for a month or two, because the site is outdated; but you can search or ask for information. :cool:

The backpack is going to be one of the various designs somewhat detailed in the backpack mod article. Don't worry, few people find that article, as the APH article doesn't really mention the backpack. The trashbag works well enough, but you could also use the backpack from a commercial water gun, a solar shower (I'm investigating this option for my own APH), one of those large sturdy containers full of water you buy at the store, or something along those lines. Clearly, there's a lot a of flexibility here.

You can also have a reservoir built into the water gun; there are some very nice-looking water guns with on-board reservoirs made of PVC.

Good luck with the build! And as always, feel free to stick around and ask any questions you want. There's a lot of information missing in the articles, and I suppose questions like these give us a better idea as to what we should include in the site update.

Ben is kinda busy right now, and he has a broken wrist, so he might not reply. However, seeing as he knows practically everything about CPHs and everything related to homemade water guns, you could probably elicit a brief explanation if you private message him and if you need something.

oddist
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Joined: Mon May 21, 2007 12:28 pm

Post by oddist » Tue May 22, 2007 12:21 pm

Hello back and THANK YOU!

I didn't know there was this much information available on PVC water-guns. Thanks for the backpack mod link, too.


I went to Lowes and priced up the parts...lil too pricey for me right now at $120, but it's a project I'll start small and build a piece at a time over the next few months (and have a LOT of fun building) As it is, I'm gonna build a smaller one and hook up 2-liter soda bottles as a water supply (use the cap, top-removed as a screw-in point.)

As for a battle, it's just "soak the daylights out of each other" rules :) As for a PVC gun, I just want the guy with the Monster XL to say "HOLY S***!!!" once...

I can definitely see the potential for modification...hmmm, I never thought of a onboard resivoir.

(big, BIG smile) Yup. This is gonna be FUN to build.

Thanks again for your very detailed answer. Hope your pal gets better soon.

Sincerely Yours,
Patrick

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Silence
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Post by Silence » Tue May 22, 2007 9:42 pm

No problem about the reply, as it's always fun to talk to exciting and well-mannered people :) . There is indeed a lot of information out there, you somewhat pick up things and remember them over time.

$120...that's quite a bit! Would you mind sharing which parts you had selected? Thanks. I'm sure we can trim down the price. :cool: (Perhaps part of the price has to do with the pressure-rated 3" tubing, especially if they only carry 10-foot lengths, not 5-foot lengths. If that's the case, you can ask the guys at Lowes to see if it's possible to cut the tube down to 5 feet and then sell it based on the online website's price. Just a thought.)

Also, I suppose a CPH would work well enough for your purposes. The latex rubber tubing will need to be ordered from McMaster-Carr, a good combination of which is part numbers 5234K86 and 5234K92. (Perhaps they've increased the selection recently.) That's a total of 60 PSI - 2 or 3 times what you'll find on most constant pressure water guns.

Couple that with a massive flow coefficient (from a large internal diameter) and a good nozzle and you're set. Ideally, you could use McMaster-Carr part number 6484T15, the smallest version of the nozzle Ben used for SuperCannon II. However, it is expensive and requires 1" tubing. A much cheaper option would be to screw in metal pipe nipples of various sizes into threaded fittings.

Obviously there's a good lack of documentation regarding CPHs. However, you could search the forums using Google (because the built-in search feature currently requires at least four characters per word) or wait for the site update. :cool:

Good luck!

EDIT: I've just moved the thread to the homemades forum...hope you don't mind. Seeing as there's some good information here, we don't want the thread left out of searches or browses of the homemade forum. :)

EDIT again: Wow, $120 really is a lot...take a look at this thread to see how much somebody got for $30 USD. Sure, prices vary from locality to locality (let alone country to country), but I'm sure things are easily as cheap here in the US.
Last edited by Silence on Tue May 22, 2007 9:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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CROC
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Post by CROC » Tue May 22, 2007 11:12 pm

$120, thats a bit more than I've paid so far for my CPH to get to where it is. Do you by any chance live in Canada? Because if you do, you need to go to a specialty plumbing store that sells pressure rated PVC, or SCH 40 Pipe. A 3" diameter section is capable of holding ~120 psi, but an APH should not go beyond that. The only thing to worry about is if you make a water balloon launcher. Then it might be a problem with pressure. It is useful if the prices are in USD, but if you specify what type of currency, (ie. A 3/4" brass check valve costs $30 CAD, we know canadian dollars) then we can convert, and it is easier to understand
-Croc
It's been a while guys, and its good to be back

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Silence
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Post by Silence » Wed May 23, 2007 9:07 pm

Good points there. The IP address suggests he lives in Chicago though, so I suppose it's in USD :cool: . Oh, and Chicago is fairly industrial, so if DX's theory proves true, PVC should be fairly cheap there.

An APH will definitely be safe with pressure ratings of 120 PSI. The pressures you get might not even break 100 PSI without a smaller-than-1/2"-PVC pump, and the pipe is safe far beyond 120 PSI.

If you build a CPH, much of the cost can be trimmed down because the larger tubing need not be pressure rated. What you would do is use non-pressure-rated 3" or 4" pipe (depending on the size of the smallest latex rubber tubing). A CPH would likely turn out to be cheaper than an APH.

oddist
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Post by oddist » Wed May 30, 2007 12:13 am

Sorry about the late reply...server problems.... :-P

I'm in the metro NJ/NYC area, FYI.

$120 was what I came up with with backpack mod, tubing, tools and the whole package.

The PVC parts (complete) were about $85 with NJ 7% tax. Add the cost of a backack, tubing, etc and I figured high. BUT! Worth it. :)

Right now I'm trying to mod my XP270 to accept tubing and a 2-liter bottle backpack resivoir. Anyone ever tried this before? So far, I have had limited success. (I'm keeping at it)

I'm gonna splurge on the Arctic Shock and the seperate 100 oz backpack (I think it's keen how you can put ice cubes in the 'Soaker) Nice lil shock for my buddy with the Hydro Blitz...hee hee hee

Thanks again, folks!

Happy soaking!

--oddist

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DX
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Post by DX » Wed May 30, 2007 12:23 am

Interesting - whereabouts in the metro area? Bergen County by any chance?

While high, $120 sounds about right due to the tools and the tubing. My homemades are often very cheap because I already have tools and a small stockpile of pvc pipes.

Any gun can be forced to accept a backpack, just have to eliminate leaking at the connections. I'd use clear vinyl tubing, which is light, cheap, flexible, and easy to attach to pvc using barbs.
Mess With the Best, Get Soaked Like the Rest!

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Silence
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Post by Silence » Wed May 30, 2007 2:18 am

Ah, I see. I suppose if some of the price is in the tools that you could in the future build other homemades or do some other hardware projects.

For the XP 270, you could drill a hole in the reservoir about the size of the vinyl tubing and then use epoxy to attach the hose. Or you could epoxy a hose barb onto the reservoir and fit vinyl tubing onto that.

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