It’s Raining Potatoes!

On a previous visit to Tony’s & Mary’s house, Tony showed me his collection of guns & rifles that he had restored. This time when we went over there Tony’s son-in-law, Mike had brought over his new hunting rifle & potato cannon.

The hunting rifle wasn’t quite working properly, but I still managed to get a couple of shots with it, managing to shoot a bucket a good 25 ft across Tony’s garden. The potato cannon was a great laugh. Mike is a plumber & had made the cannon himself out of PVC drainpipe. It is a really simple design with a chamber that is filled with hairspray (or any other flammable aerosol) which is sealed at one end with the potato & the other end with a screw in boss. A barbecue lighter inserted into the fuel chamber is used to ignite the hairspray (or other fuel) & the potato shoots out of the cannon – smart! Angie, Mike’s wife was sent out to get some more ammo & bought the potato stock from the local shop! Best results were achieved when we cut the potatoes in half, with these going a good 200 ft +.

One of Tony’s friends had brought over his Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum hand gun, so we all had a go with this in Tony’s shooting range. There was quite a bit of kick-back accompanied by large yellow flames when firing. Although this wasn’t the quite the same model as used by Clint Eastwood, I still couldn’t get the image of ‘Dirty Harry’ out of my head when firing it!

To round off the testosterone filled afternoon, we all let a few rounds go from Tony’s AK47 assault rifle. We were shooting at an old lawnmower that was probably at least 50 yds away, yet still the bullets were penetrating through the engine block, the two doors that the lawnmower was stood against, & then embedding themselves in the ground behind. This was a relatively safe environment to use these weapons, with Tony being very conscientious about keeping everyone safe. I couldn’t possibly imagine using these weapons against anything living, but there was something rather satisfying about watching the scrap lawnmower gradually being turned into a colander!