Sunny, cooler and DIY vegetable artillery

Good morning Augusta.

This morning it is partly cloudy. High of 70F. Winds from the NW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight it will be clear. Low of 55F. Winds less than 5 mph.

The readings from my own weather instruments are:

The humidity is  85% with a Dew Point of 55ºF and a temp of 60.8ºF.

Our wind direction is Southwest between 0.8 MPH and 1.3 MPH.  

Our Barometric pressure is  29.83 HPA 1008 and falling with a weather graphic indicating rain.

The UV rating is 1 out of 16, Sunrise is at 5:45 a.m. sunset is 7:39 PM and Moon Rise is at 00:00 p.m. EDT and the moon phase is in its last quarter.

For the pilots out there raw metar is:

METAR KAUG 180953Z AUTO 27005KT 10SM FEW080 SCT100 14/13 A2976 RMK AO2 RAE12 SLP075 P0001 T01440133

Visibility is 10.0 miles/16.1 Kilometers with a few clouds to 8,000 ft / 2,438 m and scattered clouds down to 10,000 ft / 3,048 m.

We received rain of 0.05 inches here over the past 24 hours.

IF you are truly bored and need to get the kids away from "wired in" and online entertainment stuff, why not do something really fun like building a small piece of light artillery?

How about a potato cannon with about 300 feet of range?

Its cheap to make and only has 7 steps in the manufacturing process, a little bit of time and a slight bit of 'gear-slippage' of your sanity and you can have a lot of fun. Even the amunition for it is bio-degradable.

 First, go to:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Potato-Cannon-10/step7/Hair-Spray/

to get the instructive pictures and detailed directions.

In short-hand, it goes something like this:

1. Barrel: The barrel is a five foot long one and a half inch length of PVC pipe. I'll bet you have something like that in a dusty corner of your garage, Don't you?

 2. Combustion chamber: This is a 3 inch by 3 foot long piece of PVC pipe that is threaded on one end (you'll need a screw-on cap for this end), and a 3 inch to inch and a half reducer on the other.

3. Barrel Muzzel: Shave down the outside end of the barrel's muzzel so that it is sharp. You need to do this so that, when you load a spud into it, the edge of the barrel shaves off the excess spud so that you get a really nice, snug fitting projectile.

4. Sparker: The sparker is nothing more than a BBQ grill igniter. You need this to set off the hair spray.

5. Mounting the sparker: The sparker needs to be mounted into the combustion chamber. How you do it depends on what kind of sparker you have – If you can drill the right size hole in the pipe and slide the sparker in, then seal it with some fiber glass resin, that would be the best. If not, then cut a notch in the pipe and slide the sparker up into the pipe  that way, then patch accordingly.

6. Connection: Connect the combustion chamber to the barrel.

7. Hair Spray: Hair spray is what you use in place of gunpowder. You need to spray it into the combustion chamber and then screw on the cap. DO NOT spray it on the sparker – Hair spray is very corrosive and it will rust the igniter rather quickly.

I have seen the foregoing design drop spuds more than 100 yards from the gun emplacement. Not too bad for some PVC, hair spray andIdaho russets.

One last word of advice, when the spud leaves the barrfel it is hard to see. If you're shooting spuds into the water, it is easier to see how far they went because you can hear them land and see the splash.