Potato problem - Is this suppose to happen?

A place for general potato gun questions and discussions.
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Sat May 08, 2010 11:35 pm

When i fire my gun, Pneumatic pumped at about 70-120 psi..With a rifled barrel, When i shoot a potato out of it, It goes CRAZY, It ill go in any direction. Could it have somthing to do with sloppy rifling? Or rifling at all? If i could get this to go streight, Then itll go a long ways, Maybe....

Its a 3/4" pvc pipe incase that helps
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saefroch
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Sat May 08, 2010 11:44 pm

I would say sloppy rifling personally. Don't have much experience in this domain, but without rifling one tends to achieve a more linear path, if you can try to replace the barrel without changing much about the ammo, see if you get any sort of change from that. The pressure shouldn't have much of an effect unless your spuds are exiting at very low velocity.
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Sat May 08, 2010 11:47 pm

This could be due to sloppy rifling, did you use the old dowel and nail system or was it done profesionally? Also, do you muzzle load the potato, because breach loading is a must. There could be a variety of different problems, rifling too tight, rifling too deep, etc... So we'll need pictures for a better understanding
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Sun May 09, 2010 12:00 am

Old dowel/nail system...And i breech load it using the uhh...Ball valve breech loader thingy

And actually, I might have just realized my own problem after looking at the image, It seems alot better in person...better off using a smoothbore

Image
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Demon
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Sun May 09, 2010 8:10 am

I think your problem is excess riffling ...
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saefroch
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Sun May 09, 2010 1:14 pm

Yeah, that's an awful lot of rifling, usually it's one turn down the whole barrel, maybe two.
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mark.f
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Sun May 09, 2010 2:17 pm

I would go with smoothbore and drag-stabilized projectiles like darts (or even Dum-Dum lollipops, with that 3/4" barrel).

Rifling needs to be done right or not at all, or, as has been pointed out, the projectile will gain too much spin.
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saefroch
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Sun May 09, 2010 3:31 pm

Random cylindrical metal objects with tape on them work wonders. Or BBs and a hot glue plug behind them with lots of vaseline.
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Sun May 09, 2010 6:33 pm

Alright, Problem solved, Thanks...I'll do it right next time.
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