Disclaimer: The activities described in these pages is potentially very dangerous to your life, health, and property. It also can endanger the lives and property of others, especially if done in a reckless, careless, or simply negligent manner. Sometimes bad things can happen even if you do everything carefully.

By entering this page you have agreed to study this subject in a responsible manner.

Under Construction

Why build an air cannon? For me it was curiosity. It has involved learning to wear a lot of different hats: Structural engineer, pipefitter, instrumentation designer, surveyor, machinist, plumber, electrician, mechanic, radio operator, athlete, aerodynamics scientist, and numerous other hard sciences required to make one of these things work well.

Since the project started I have gotten back up to speed on the gas laws, smooth and turbulent airflow phenomena, flight stability dynamics, calculating wind triangles, and a bunch of safety techniques.

The number one thing is safety. It is possible to send a half pound projectile more than 3/4 of a mile (over a full kilometer) at speeds so far approaching mach 0.5

Thus to even think of building such a thing you must have access to a place in a remote area to actually test it.

Check out Dan's video of an air tank failing catastrophically.
Right click on this link and select Save Link As (from Netscape) or Save Target As (from MSIE) and then from Windows Explorer, double click on the resulting file once it is downloaded. In the meantime, you can browse the site in the foreground.

A Quick Exhaust Valve type air cannon.