New Blowgun Video

Regular readers of my blog will remember my doing a post or two about blowguns. The "native blowgun" has fascinated me since I was a boy. As an adult I have played with both manufactured as well as home made ones off and on over the years. Within the last couple years, not only have I made improvements to my home made ones, but have also found a new use for them as a teaching aid.

Each semester, I do a graphic demonstration of pneumatics principles for my students in Hydraulics and Pneumatics lab. I shoot darts into a board from across the room using a home made blowgun. It's quite amusing to see the "yeah, right - whatever" looks on students' faces as I take the blowgun out and load it with a dart. It's even more entertaining to see the looks on their faces and hear a few of them gasp when they see and hear the darts slam into the board. Most are left with no further doubts regarding the power even a few PSI of air pressure can deliver.

To follow is a link to my latest YouTube video. This was shot at a high frame rate and slowed down so the flight and impact of the dart can be observed.

InKarlsLab - Blowgun Video

Enjoy :)

P.S. One of the most memorable remarks a student made to me in class early on one semester was "I wanna know when the darts come out." He had obviously heard about it from the prior semester's students.

More on Blowguns

A while back, I wrote a post about making and shooting a homemade blowgun. Shooting blowguns is becoming quite a popular sport - both in the United States as well as in Japan. And it's inexpensive and thus affordable by nearly anybody. It's also one of the safest of the shooting sports if one uses some common sense.

My previous blowgun post may be found here:

http://inkarlslab.blogspot.com/2011/10/pvc-blowgun.html

Recently, I have found some other web sites on blowgunning that I think are well worthwhile to check out. A couple general interest ones are here:

This one is a great discussion group that covers all aspects of making and using blowguns.
http://blowgunforum.com

The guy who did this site has an engineering background, and offers some interesting analysis as well as some construction ideas of his own.
http://www.polar-electric.com/Blowgun/Darts/index.html#TableTop

Here is an organization devoted to furthering blowgun shooting as a sport.
http://usblowgun.com/

Measuring Performance
Anyone seriously pursuing the shooting sports will at some point want to measure the velocity of their projectiles. Velocity has a direct impact (no pun intended) on both accuracy as well as, in the case of hunting, how effective it is at killing the intended game. Relating to blowguns, velocity measurements also give a quantitative measure of how one's lung power is developing over time.

Regular readers of this blog have also seen my "Poor Man's Ballistic Chronometer" plans. This definitely follows the old adage that "necessity is the notherhood of invention." I did not have the money in the family budget to buy a ballastic chronometer for measuring dart and arrow velocities, so I did some research and built my own out of about $15 in electronic parts. The article, done in two posts, starts here:

http://inkarlslab.blogspot.com/2012/01/poor-mans-ballistic-chronometer-part-1.html

The engineer I mentioned above had a somewhat similar idea, though he did things a bit differently. He has written some cool looking software that is free for downloading. Looks like a viable idea, though I doubt it would work well outdoors or in environments with a lot of background noise. Here's his setup:
http://www.polar-electric.com/Blowgun/Software/Dartspeed.html



A Word of Caution:

This should be common sense, but in view of how rare a commodity it is in this world today, the following bears mentioning:

NEVER aim a blowgun at, or shoot at, another person or any animal you don't intend to kill and eat!
There have been some news stories about people who have shot at ducks and geese in municipal parks with blowguns, resulting in darts still being lodged in their bodies. Do NOT do a stupid stunt like that! This gives ALL of us who engage in blowgunning as a sport a bad name and could result in blowguns being made illegal EVERYWHERE - as they already have in Kalifornia and Massachusetts.

If you want to hunt small game with a blowgun, as some folks successfully do, make sure you have the right type of equipment and comply with all local laws!

Children and teenagers should be well supervised when using this or any other weapon.


Sport blowgun shooting can be a fun and safe activity for people of all ages and from all walks of life. Blowguns, darts, or the makings for doing your own, are available just about anywhere and are quite inexpensive. I did mine and the darts for about $10 worth of supplies found at the hardware store and/or around the house.

Ballistic Chronometer - Revision 1.5

A colleague brought it to my attention that there were a couple errors on the schematic I posted for the Poor Man's Ballistic Chronometer. The revised version is shown here.

I have also updated the schematic on the original post and wish to offer my sincere apologies to anyone who might have downloaded this circuit and attempted to build it.

The original post is located here: http://inkarlslab.blogspot.com/2012/01/poor-mans-ballistic-chronometer-part-1.html