Blast It – Air Cannon Fun

Air cannons are a BLAST!  I cannot take credit for this design or any for that matter but they can easily be replicated to suite your needs.  We use them to lauch torpedo shaped footballs into waste bins, we only use about 15 psi. for that.  Jack the air to 80 psi and you can barely see it.  

The systems I have made in the past were constructed of pvc, I am incredibly leery of using pvc pipe under pressure. There are enough articles on the Internet that warn against using pvc under pressure. It is not intended for pressurized air, however, at only 15-30 psi it is fairly safe. 

I never let the children handle any components other than the trigger and I have the cannon mounted on an adjustable frame to compensate for height and distance.  In fact another one of my upcoming projects is to aim & fire the air cannon remotely.  Pop Pop will still load the thing.

How To Improve Clay Soil – Deep Soil Decompaction

There are some areas of the country that have a high concentration of clay. If you are a potter that might be neat but as a homeowner I can’t stand it. Recently, I read that there are soil de-compaction services that inject high-pressure air, water, fertilizer and even aqueous foam pellets.

It is pretty amazing to watch and it is very effective. As you can probably imagine it is an expensive piece of equipment. As it drives over an area it lowers several hollow spikes into the ground and injects compressed air at about 100-300 psi instantaneously. The rapidly expanding air displaces the clay and a void is created. This process is then repeated over the desired area. When the ground does not break apart a high-pressure slug of water is injected and that is when the water works happens.

Because they are big and expensive I decided to build a small hand-held unit to de-compact my yard.

Watch the video and follow this link to see how it works.