Spud-a-thon™ 2012

Mix one potato, a modicum of hair spray, a spark and we have…

My wife Marianne is deeply involved with the classic car community. Although an art historian by training and experience, she started on the road to “gear-head” several years ago when she became the curator/director for a classic car museum in Bernardsville, NJ. The museum had a great collection of mostly American convertibles from the 1940s to the early 1960s. Like Marissa Tomei’s character Mona Lisa Vito from the 1992 film My Cousin Vinny, Marianne can tell you whether an early model Corvette is a 1953 or 1954 version by the minor details that distinguish them.

Yet as knowledgeable as she is about car models and styling, she is a tyro when it comes to basic car technology. She had no idea how an internal combustion engine works. A car buddy of hers discovered this when trying to explain the exciting features of the Chrysler Hemi engine. He suggested she needed to learn more about engines and pointed her to Google.

Googling led to the discovery that spud guns share the same basic locomotive principle as car engines: rapidly expanding gas contained in a cylinder propels the payload, a piston or a potato. She was hooked.

We are fans of Hugh Laurie’s House TV character. There is an episode of House, M.D, which features a funny sequence between a young spud gun builder and the doctor. (You can view it at http://telee.tv/?p=30. The spud gun scene runs from 21:20 to 22:30 of the video.)

This only fueled Marianne’s fascination with spud guns. She wanted one of her own. I told her it was impractical. Our daughter’s boyfriend, who had built one with his friends, when he was younger, also threw cold water on the notion.

Woot.com is a website owned by Amazon. It features daily deals on a few, selected items. Early on the morning of December 30, 2011 I awoke to find an email from Woot.com offering to sell me a spud gun for $19.95 plus $5 shipping. I pulled the trigger and ordered one for Marianne. We were both excited and anxious to have it.

After more than a week’s wait it was delivered yesterday. We quickly unwrapped it.

Some assembly required

The spud gun came in three parts, two pieces of PVC tubing and the ignition assembly. Its total length is about 22½”. Supposedly it can launch a potato up to a ¼ mile.

It was a bit of an ordeal to put the ignition assembly into the rear tube. Fortunately, our friend Diana was visiting when it arrived and helped solve the problem. Marianne now has what appears to be a functioning spud gun. At least the ignition sparks when turned.

We found a board in the barn to use as a platform to push against to put the potatoes into the barrel. The open barrel end serves as a potato cutter, so that potatoes fits tightly in the barrel. We found another, long board to serve as a plunger to push the potato down into the barrel. We plan to buy fuel and ammunition (hair spray and potatoes) for this weekend’s field test.

If the testing is successful then Spud-a-thon™ 2012 is a go.