Super Soaker Central

I have decided on the second design and I'm starting on the balloon PC now. I've attached the first balloon onto a hose barb, and I need to know if I follow the K-mod and cut the necks off, or do I keep the necks on? Also, is it bad if there is air between the layers of balloons?

Edit: I have layered 3 full balloons, and am now following the K-mod, with cutting the necks off. For some reason, after adding my third cut balloon, water piles up in the neck instead of the bulb. What am I doing wrong?

Basically the water is being pushed into the bulb, but the bulb is squeezing the water more than the necks. Therefore the water gets squeezed out of the bulb and into the neck part.

I really hope that wasn't just a load of waffle and made some sense

I remember JLSpaceMarine saying that he left the necks oonly the first 10-15 balloons. And air pockets are bad, as the will cause uneven pressure and stress, possibly ruining your PC if too many are present. I think that air bubbles should be easy to get out though, depending on what method you are using to create your PC.

It works! But it sucks. I've finished assembling the gun, and I used my 3 base balloons for the bladder and a riot blast. Everything functions fine, it's just that my initial shot went 5 feet then everything else waterfalled down. I still have yet to K-mod and add a nozzle. Everything is on hold right now, because I ran out of super glue and am using Loctite "waterproof adhesive" which takes 24 hours. Don't worry, it's not for the PVC; I used proper cement for that. The Loctite is for the PC; I have a 20 oz. SoBe bottle for a pc, and am gluing the cap to the 90 degree elbow. This way I can screw on the PC case and screw it back off again.

The soda bottle is the PC case, right? If so, did you drill holes in it? If you did not, you could seal up the bottle, and use this as an AP gun like the XPS mod- shoot at any angle.

If there are holes(needed for the CP in CPS), you will likely need at least 50 balloons to get good power. 75-100 would be ideal for a lower volume design like yours.

Finally, a soda bottle will be a terrible case for a spherical PC. They are difficult in homemades because of the lack of good cases you may want to try two bowls sandwiched together, with a hole cut for piping. You could even close it with screws to make an easily opened case.

The problem with bowls is that it would need rearranging the PVC, but I have already cemented it. 50 balloons? Wow, that's a lot. I'm stuck with three for now since when I K-mod the neck inflates, and I don't know how to fix that.

Edit: It's a CPS, not XPS. If the bladder doesn't turn out well I'll just convert it to XPS.

The lightest K-mod I have heard of is 15 balloons. Like I said in the earlier post, you should leave the necks on about 15 to 20 balloons. You can leave the necks on more, it just makes the layering more difficult. If you slide the necks all the way onto the clamp, you can also make it so that the necks don't expand at all. JLSpaceMarine stated that he used 50 balloons for his gun. Balloons are very thin. Also, when layering baloons, you may want to write in sharpie the number of balloons every fifth balloon, just so you know later.

I am actually planning on doing a mod like this, either with a Bottle Blitz (cheap) or the Scatter Blast (looks good). If I used a Scatter Blast, I'd likely use LRT, add a backpack, and use the original nozzle. The Bottle Blitz would be trickier, as it is much more compact, and I would probably use a spherical PC, and still add a backpack.

I have done some informal range testing with 15-20 balloons and a faulty nozzle. I get about 15 feet with the nozzle and 5 without. However, the nozzle is the stock one which I crudely attached temporarily to the ball valve. I plan on permanently attaching it with Loctite Waterproof Adhesive. I basically wrapped electrical tape around the ball valve until it fit the nozzle snugly. It leaks, causing me to get wet while shooting it. With it sealed and the nozzle drilled, I hope it will beat my Overload.

The first picture is of the completed gun. The second and third ones show how I attached the nozzle. And the last two show that Atvan was mostly correct about the check valve. As you can see, there is a check valve in the nozzle. Won't be needing that anymore though.

Looks good-ish. Lol. Did you drill holes in the water bottle? When you have some spare time, just add 5-10 balloons at a time, until you get the power you want. However, range and power will be reduced by the fact that the PC is so small compare to the max possible size of the balloons. You may want to try to make a PC with water balloons, which are meant to expand less, and thus they apply more force to the smaller volumes.

Yeah, the water bottle has holes. I would have used water balloons but they were designed to break. All I need now is a shell. I'll probably use those binders that don't have seams, just a solid sheet of plastic. Speaking of which, atvan, how's the holster coming along?

Edit: Well, the nozzle is on hold. Turns out electrical tape isn't good for gluing. I have to go to Lowe's sometime soon to return some PVC fittings that I didn't need when I switched designs. I'm thinking of ditching the stock nozzle and just using a hose barb. Any suggested diameters?

For the nozzle hose barb- the smallest you can find. I think I saw 1/8 inch (outside, so about 1/16 inch inside) to 1/2 inch pipe at my Lowes, and if you can't find those, you can get 1/8-1/4 then step it up to 1/2 inch(that is the size piping you're using, right?). That should be a good size, as that is the size of a MD3k nozzle, which is the preformance this gun seems like. You can also try a smaller nozzle if you want more shot time.

Binders won't really work for strcture, as the bendy ones are bendy and the stiff ones are cardboard.

About the holster, work is moving along, but it is a pain because I don't have a hole puncher, and kept accidentally stabbing my thumb with the scissors or slicing my other thumb with the scissors while punching holes. I also didn't plan well, so I had to improvise braces for the walls to stay together. Also, aside from the fact that my mechanism will probably not work, it is going to look crappy. Yippee for homemade things that don't work or look good!

http://z8.invisionfree.com/soakermedia/ ... wtopic=615
Some clamping ideas, though intended for cylindrical bladders.

http://z8.invisionfree.com/soakermedia/ ... wtopic=474
Some Guy's balloon CPH. He got good range with 45 balloons. Used a big reducer for the PC...dunno if he actually covered the whole thing. I would cover it, maybe 4" PVC is wide enough. Of course, something like that would ruin the aesthetics of your gun, so weigh the tradeoffs.

I made a quick run to ACE today but they didn't have the right size of barb. I'm going to use a threaded endcap even though I've read that they don't perform well.