The propellant was hairspray. You'd unscrew a threaded PVC end-cap from the back of the cannon, spray the hairspray into it, screw the cap back on, and ignite with a flint striker from the outside.
It was a really cool device.
The best was breach loading a racket ball that wouldn't quite fit into the barrel, but would get stuck enough to not fall away when presented forcefully from the larger combustion chamber side.
They flew way farther than potatoes, and exited the barrel with deformations in their ball shape from not quite fitting, making the flight path all sorts of erratic for the first hundred feet or so.
We used to take it to a nearby park and get kids to catch and return fly balls by shooting ~vertically for them. You couldn't even see the ball for a good chunk of the flight, good times. Prolly get arrested for such a thing today.
In a rural area, you're still looking at a pat on the back instead of handcuffs, in the unlikely event that an authority figure notices.
In a suburban area, you get cops asking if you could please stop detonating vegetables near your nosy neighbor's property.
In a dense city, you might be lucky if you can avoid being shot to death after the first few explosions.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=atf+defin...
An ignorant but technically motivated person can also "accidentally" build an NFA form 1 or form 4 firearm by making a short barrelled rifle without the appropriate tax stamp, just by combining pieces together. Or by doing something like putting a vertical foregrip on something that is legally a pistol. Or by making a home-made silencer. And so on.
> Any type of weapon by whatever name known which will, or which may readily be converted to expel a projectile, by the action of an explosive or other propellant, the barrel or barrels of which have a bore greater than one-half inch in diameter.
Hmm, guess that would technically cover potato canons? Though the exemptions include
> a device which is neither designed nor redesigned for use as a weapon
:shrug:
My father made 3 of these in the 1980s for 3 different caliber pistols. We later disassembled them out of fear.
People make bowling ball mortars from gas cylinders and those have a bore even larger than any potato cannon. Yet they are perfectly legal.
Ofc here both are illegal, as the potato cannons cannot use combustion for power.
Oh you pussy. You think Sam Bankman-Fried built a 20 billion dollar empire with that attitude?
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
