Posted on 12/27/2016 9:21:37 AM PST by w1n1
Used section of car antenna for barrel.Nail for firing pin sand rubber band powered.
The old style plastic barrel
Ed
You are correct, there are plenty of off the shelf pipe that is entirely suitable for making a gun. I would always recommend that it be seamless pipe from a pipe supply house as most of the pipe you buy in a hardware store is rolled pipe [with a welded seam].
Very familiar with those items... :^)
Industry maximum recommended specs for run-of-the mill 2 3/4” and 3” 12 gauge shotgun shells is 11,500 PSI. Magnum loads can go to 14,000 PSI. .22 Long Rifle is 24,000 PSI.
Quality schedule 40 steel pipe is good for a working pressure of 2000 psi, rated burst at 12900 in 3/4 inch that would be needed for a standard 12 gauge. That would be shaky with 12 ga loads that normally run to 12000 on the very high end, even with the sloppy fit between the “barrel” and “receiver”.
Cheap hardware store water pipe is a crap-shoot.
I’ve seen those set up for a .30-06 round.
Sch 40 pipe is a crapshoot. I say this even though I built a slam fire 12ga shotgun about 50 years ago and still have all my fingers. It was an old idea even then.
A few years back I took another look at doing it again with stronger material. I could not find seamless 4130 tubing the correct diameter. That would have provided a safety factor of 2 or 2-1/2 to one for magnum loads from calculations. However, 1010 tubing is available in the correct sizes and gave a safety factor of about 1-1/2 to one for magnum loads (from memory). Didn’t do it, at least yet.
It was illegal to have guns on the island of Guam in the early ‘50s and my oldest brother made a zip gun and got sent stateside.
“...illegal to have guns ...”
People will always find a way to get what they want.
It’s the way we are.
NOW yer talkin’!
I made a 12 gauge mole gun a long time ago out of an angle iron tripod with a pipe barrel and a wire tripped spring loaded ‘hammer’ against firing ‘bolt’.
You just stick it on a new mound and when the the dirt gets shoved against the wire trip blamm! Mole guts!
I put a plastic trash can over it.
It works great. My father inlaw showed me how he made one.
Seamless high pressure piping would be the thing to use. Still wouldn’t be too costly for the small quantity needed. I wouldn’t use cheap schedule 40 hardware store pipe for a hand held gun either. For the devices that are buried, of course, it doesn’t matter, they just have to work once.
Yes,and just about any round that acceptable pipe/hardware can be made or acquired will work. Even a .22 would inflict a painful wound.
I have a few 1 FT. long pieces of DOM tubing, I believe it is, 1” I.D., 1/4” wall. Supposed to be about a 1020-1023 equivalent. Not sure if it true, pierced “seamless”, or welded, scarfed and then cold drawn. Based on the finish I’d say the latter.
My son will eventually make a black powder blunderbuss or small cannon. IIRC, he said it would be good to about 18,000 PSI burst.
There’s a whole bunch of folks who reload shotgun shells with low pressure loads for use in older guns. I have a 16 gauge recipe using Herco that is around 5000 psi, moving 7/8th of an ounce of shot at 1100 fps.
Back when I worked in northern NJ, locals told me a couple tales about the old Hercules powder plant in Roxbury Township blowing up.
That’s something that would stick in your memory.
shooting a .20G from a .12G pointed BACK AT YOU is prolly not the smartest of things to do... but that's just me
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