Pumpkin Guns/Cannon holy #@$%

The caliber is whatever the ID of the big chunk of steel pipe you can find for a barrel is. Which can vary a great deal according to the "Stuff Acquisition" skills and/or the financial condition of the buyer's bank account.

I suppose there is a natural upper limit somewhere on practical barrel sizes, but until you find it "Bigger Is Better" holds true.

First you build the gun, then you design the sabots (so you don't spend all day making pumpkin paste out of your ammunition), then you find ammunition pumpkins that fit the results of the first two steps.

Of course, I'd love to see someone build a self-contained mobile armored chunker, something on the lines of a re-barreled Sherman. I'd pay a quarter to see that... ;-0

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The program I saw on TV had the cannon types and the centrifugal types and the catapult types.

The cannon types seemed to me to have tapered barrels that looked like successively smaller diameters of pipes. It was amazing to me that the punkins came out the other end in one piece.

The catapults were okay, and got good distance.

But the centrifugals were the most awesome. They had wheels perhaps 20' in diameter that spun at incredible speed. I didn't get to see a close up of the release mechanism, or the sling that held the punkin, but it was something like the sling on the catapults. These have to be balanced pretty good, and they have had them to berserk out of balance during competitions and stomp all over whatever was parked next to it. They came on huge trailers pulled by huge semis. A lot of money just to throw a punkin.

But the results were incredible. They had a cleared field for about 750 feet, then woods. They had to send search teams into the woods to find the final impact point, and sometimes it took them quite a while. They had spotters that would stand behind the device and try to plot the line of trajectory.

If anyone sees that program coming up, I, and I know others here, would appreciate a heads up.

Sure beat the heck out of American Chopper, although there were human interactions that made American Chopper look like girlie mens.

Steve

Tom Wait wrote: chunkinpunkinpushincusion.

Love this . Accurate and funny at the same time :-) . This would be the perfect theme/title for a children s book . Let me know when you have it done so I can find a kid to use as cover while reading it . Ken Cutt

750 feet!!! Mere beginners. Go to the World Punkin Chunkin Site and look at last years results. The winner in the cannon went 4200+ feet.....

Shotgun shells that fire shot..use shot cups and occasionally wads. Shotgun shells that fire a solid projectile, a finned slug or dart acuatlly..use a sabot to hold the projectile..and they fall away once it clears the barrel.

Wadding seals the bore, but does little to cushion the pumpkin.

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

Hence most of the pumpkin cannons seem to use low pressure, high volume air. They tend to have a huge surge tank coupled to the barrel via a ball valve and a high throughput connection.

Think tire-bead seating machine.

Jim

I'll go with that.

Duzzat count for my 12 gauge slug-chucker? That's a solid projectile, right?

I can't help eyeing the disassembled Remington "Slugger" shell laying nearby, which shows lots of signs of wadding, but nothing recognizable to me as a sabot...

Going down the stack, it's got a rolled crimp holding down a slug with an exposed nose, which is sitting on top of (not in or surrounded by, just sitting on top of) some sort of rubber-like plastic ring, similar to a garden hose washer, but smaller and stiffer, which in turn sits on top of (again, on, not in) a thick - I eyeball it at about half an inch

- fiber plug, which is above a half inch or so tall plastic "pillar" with an integral bore-diameter base that sits on top of another thick (this one only about 3/8 inch, I'd say) fiber plug, which sits on top of a thin piece of a cardboard-like substance that keeps the powder tamped down against the primer.

Other than the shell casing itself, nothing is wrapped around any of the stack in such a way that it would prevent direct, intimate contact of any portion of the OD of the stack with the ID of the barrel.

Where's the sabot??? Did I blink and miss it? :)

Gotta tip the hat your way for the sabot/wadding distinction, though - I wasn't aware that the punkin-chunkers had taken up sabots. Last time I paid attention, they were wadding them heavily, but hadn't progressed to the more advanced sabot concept.

I know what you mean . I would post more if I could but typing is a big deal for me . Still a cool theme for a book . Ken Cutt

Chuckle...sabots are typically used for sub bore diameter projectiles. After all..Sabot means "shoe"

Your slug, if its a bore riding full diameter projectile uses a wad behind it to seal the bore. Some of the early Forester type hollow base slugs, which used weight forewards stabilization used only an over powder wad. Brenneke and similar slugs use a wad at the base of the slug for bore sealing/wiping

You may find these of interest

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

Hence the derivation of the term 'sabotage.'

Jim