Survival UK Forums

Quite a neat idea....i wonder if using a steel pipe ,even more pressure could be achieved ? .....i like it......lots.

People on here have asked which DIY / low-tech weapon would stop an intruder coming up the stairs - I think we might have a new candidate :-)

Many moons ago I was involved in vehicle engineering training at a TA unit and was tasked to do an exercise along the lines of scrap heap challenge where teams had to build some sort highly mobile vehicle out of scrap cars and build a weapon system to fire paint balls, as part of the build up to the exercise I worked through possible solutions to ensure that the task was achievable with the scrap we were providing, I built a compressed air cannon based around old fire extinguishers which will stand pressures up to and in excess of 200psi and squaddies being squaddies didn't just try out the paint balls as ammunition but various other choice items , had a max range of a couple hundred meters and possibly lethal out 75m or so, no real accuracy, but used on mass or blunder buss style would certainly make people reconsider their opptions.
Using compressed air as a propellant has mostly been over looked, but anything is possible just look at some of the pumpkin cannons that our friends over the pond like to build.
Interestingly the solutions that the teams came up with on the exercise were quite varied, but all worked to some degree and that was with just a couple of days to complete the task.

We once built a SCUBA tank powered paintball machinegun mounted in a sidecar for a Harley-Davidson police motorcycle and fired with hand controls by the motorman, which fired "paintballs" filled with a mixture of CS gas and pepper spray for riot control. Effective range of the gun was over 100 metres, but the firing force was so great that about 20% of the projectiles cracked. corkscrewed and streamed agent during an erratic, shorter flight, which overall produced an enhanced area effect. Experiments were also done freezing the projectiles to reduce rupture, and glancing them off the pavement, in front of the target area to disperse the agent, which worked very well, but if the gun was fired directly at someone within a short range of 25 metres or so, its 300 fps velocity was potentially lethal.

DC Metropolitan Police still have one. I don't know where the others went...

HE-HE-HA-HA-HA-HA mad german engineering laugh