The heat of this summer (2015, Vancouver, BC Area), along with something that happened to my youngest child, prompted me to look into how to DIY a good water gun.
My youngest was at an end-of-the-school year party at a local park. The kids were told it was OK to bring water guns, yay! So we went out and bought a couple of cheap water guns. Long story short, my kid had fun, but was severely outgunned…
So I thought maybe I’d see if the internet had a solution to that. 😉
One of my first hits was:
Super Soaker Central, a now-archived site that contains plans and a discussion forum all about DIY water gun stuff! This is a fantastic site!
We also found an Instructable walking us through some of the very basics for homemade water gun theory:
Easy-Peasy PVC Water Gun [All Steps]. We did make 6 of those, I’ll put up a page with some pictures and link to it here: DIY Water Gun- V1.
During my reading, I’ve learned a lot about the various parts of the water gun and how they work and connect together. In this post I want to sketch out the basic parts as I see them. There are basically 4 different parts to any water gun, DIY versions are no different, other than getting to pick and choose the exact thing we want for each! 😉
First: In the simple dollar-store water guns (the kind that shoot water when you ‘squeeze’ a small pump trigger), many of these parts are compressed together. This gives simplicity, but at a loss of range, rapidity and power. The only pressure involved is however much the shooter can apply with their trigger finger on a small, usually cheap plastic, pump mechanism. I won’t really be talking about those, but more the pressurized “Super Soaker” style. My version of the pump-to-shoot would be the Easy-Peasy Instructable I mentioned above.
Second: There are actually 2 different types of pressurized water gun. The most simple version is the Air Pressure Homemade (APH), which just uses the air inside the gun “system” as the firing force. You pump water into the system (with the firing mechanism closed), which pressurizes the air into the highest spaces, and then uses that air pressure to push out the water when the ball valve is opened.
The “newer” version is called a “Constant Pressure Homemade” (CPH). It uses air pressure combined with the mechanical pressure of an sealed latex tube filled up with that air/water. The air/water expands the latex like a balloon, and when the gun is fired the latex contracts, pushing the water out the nozzle.
I’ll get into more explanations of the differences when I get to those parts of the gun itself, which I’ll finally get to now!
Firing Mechanism
The business end I call the Firing Mechanism. It contains the nozzle the water comes out of, and the ball valve that controls whether the water comes out or not. Pretty simple stuff, basically interchangeable between the two types of gun.
Pressure Chamber/Mechanism
The next section is the Pressure Chamber, or Pressure Mechanism. This is the part that holds the firing pressure as well as the water ammo. This is also the only part that changes between the two designs. The incoming connection from the pump mechanism feeds into this part.
In the APH version, this part contains 1 or more pressure chambers, poking out above the barrel. These are used to increase the volume of the system, thus increasing the amount of air it held, the amount of water it can hold, giving longer shots between pumps at the same pressure. These chambers can be combined together as many times as the builder would like, and made as big as the builder would like to handle.
In the CPH version, this part contains a latex tube, attached with high pressure fittings to the pump input/firing mechanism, with a plug in the open end also attached with high pressure fittings. These latex tubes can also be layered, making them higher pressure with each layer applied.
NOTE: Because of the way this system can get higher pressures, it is highly recommended that any CPH mechanism be fully encased in some sort of protective housing. If pressures exceed the fittings, the plug-end can blow out, or the entire latex chunk can blow itself off the pump input. When a protective container is being built, care must be taken to ensure that the size takes into account the size of the fully-expanded latex tube. The tube will expand A LOT! Be Careful!
Pump Mechanism
The magic part is the pump mechanism. It’s basically the same as the Easy-Peasy, except it’s hooked up to 2 check valves. One pointing in the ‘out’ direction, pushing water into the pressure mechanism, and one in the ‘in’ direction, sucking water from your water source.
Water Source
And the final part is that water source. For most of the guns you buy in the store, the body of the gun itself is the water source. All of the above parts are made very small, to fit inside the case of the gun. Others come with external sources (like a backpack), or combine the two (with the body being used as direct source, but refilled automatically from the backpack).
Conclusions
Given the right connections, all of these various parts can be made separately and then hooked together. If threaded connections are chosen, they could be interchanged.
I hope to document any projects in these pages, and I’ll link here as I go.
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