Awesome DIY Paper Cannon

Hello everyone :) here is a tutorial of a paper cannon I made over the last few days. I am very happy with the design and it's capabilities. I hope you guys enjoy it as well and try it out. Let's begin :)

For this step you are going to need quite a few sheets of paper. I am a huge fan of recycling so I used an old Ikea magazine for this. You can use any kind of paper, from old newspaper to regular plain paper. The next step will be to place a pencil towards the bottom of one of the sheet. Then you need to try to start rolling the sheet around the pencil, keeping it as tight as possible. You can then put some glue on the edge of the paper to ensure that it stays tight. Make sure to avoid getting glue on the pencil or it will be close to impossible for you to get the pencil out once the barrel is done. Once you have about 1 inch left in your sheet of paper you can add a second one to it by gluing it to the top of the first sheet. Keep repeating these procedure until you have a barrel with a nice thickness (mine had a diameter of about 1 and a half inches)

Let the barrel sit until the glue is fully dry. Chances are you won't obtain nice flat ends at the sides so you can use a Dremel or a saw to cut the excess. I found it was easier to use masking tape to define the line I wanted to follow when using the Dremel, that way I could obtain a clean and straight cut. Once the edges are removed you can then use a second pencil to push the first pencil out of the barrel.

Now we need to block one of the ends of the barrel. To do this we can measure and cut 1/2 inch from one of the pencils we used in the previous steps. We then need to use some white glue to glue it inside of one of the ends of the barrel.

Now we need to drill a hole that will allow you to insert the fuse into the barrel. For this step you will need to drill a small hole about 2 mm away from the end of the piece of pencil we previously glued.

For great homemade fuses all you are going to need are some matches, water, rubbing alcohol and a string. Start by grinding some match heads (I used about 50 matches because I wanted to obtain multiple fuses). Then you can start adding equal amounts of water and rubbing alcohol to the powder. Continue adding rubbing alcohol and water until you obtain a thick mixture like the one in the picture. At this point you can submerge the string in the mixture. Try to ensure the string is fully coated. I would recommend using gloves during this step because the ink contained in the match heads may stain your fingers (mine were pink for 2 days LOL). At this point you can hang the string and let it dry for about half an hour to an hour. Once the string is fully dry you can cut it into small sections. There you go, fuses are done :)

I am aware that you could use actual gunpowder for this but I wanted to keep the project as DIY as possible so I researched how to make your own. This mixture works perfectly for small projects like this one. Begin by scraping off some of the brown striking surface of the match box. You are also going to need to grind some more match heads for this step. Mix the brown powder with the match head power using a 1 to 2 ratio.

There you go, your DIY gunpowder is done! You can use an exacto knife or any small tool to load a few tiny scoops of this mixture into the barrel before inserting your projectile.

Tip: you can shoot pretty much anything that fits into the barrel, from green peas to spit balls but I found that the erasers on the back of the pencils work best.