Upgraded!! Homemade BigBoom Reactive Target 2.1

[josixpack]

I got the Airburst MegaBoom STS 2.0 Target System over the weekend and after looking at it I decided to try and make my own.  To my surprise it was just as loud as the real thing.

I had a few old deflated balls that the dog plays with so I cut out the valve stem, removed the little rubber gasket and pushed it through a 1/4 hole drilled in soda bottle top.  With the cap off the bottle I held the gasket in place and pushed the needle attached to the air pump into the gasket.  Then I screwed the bottle onto the cap and filled it with air.  It leaks just a little bit but if you finagle the gasket some you can get it to stop leaking.  Although, I didn't like messing with it too much while it was pressurized.  I shot a couple and one while it was leaking some and it still made the loud boom but will leak all the air in time.

After taking the pictures I made two more and added two more 1 inch pcv tees so the stand will hold three bottles  I see that on ebay you can buy bags of the rubber gaskets, 25 for 10 bucks which seems like a good deal and may seal better then the ones from old chewed up balls.

[Tdubya]

Cool. big bangs are always fun!

[Tater]

Cool set up.

[56S]

How much pressure can you safely pump into these?

[josixpack]

How much pressure can you safely pump into these?

That’s a good question.  The MegaBoom instructions say to fill soda bottles (didn't what size) up to 100psi and thin walled water bottles up to 60psi.  I have a bicycle pump with pressure gauge and I wasn’t getting results with anything less than 100psi on 12oz coke bottles and thin walled water bottles and the max I went on a 12oz coke bottle was 120psi.  My gauge may not be accurate though. 

I’m going to get various sized bottles and fill them until they burst to see what the max is.  I figure if I put a few, maybe five heavy folded blankets over the bottle it should mute the boom since I'll only be a couple feet from it.  Of course I’ll be wearing safety glasses and ear protection.  I’ll post the results once completed.

Anyone know if they make air hose adaptors so you could split one hose into three??  It would be nice to fill multiple same sized bottles at one.

[josixpack]

I’ve upgraded my homemade megaboom reactive targets to be filled in the stand.

I got the valve stems at my local TrueValue Hardware store.  The bolt together valves work great but are not long enough to fill in the stand but they may come in longer lengths.  The one piece rubber valves work just fine but are a little harder to install.  I believe I drilled a ½” hole and used pliers to work the valve in place.  No leaks from either valve.  I wrapped some orange duck tape around the bottle cap to make a snug fit in the tee which helps hold it in place.  It also makes them a little more visible if they do fly out.

I had to cut the 1” tees down a bit so the valve would extend far enough to connect the air hose.

The bag is just a $2.00 dryer bag. Total cost to make was around $15.00.  A 5" piece of pvc is around $1.50 and 1" tees are $0.76 so you could expand it to hold more bottles on the cheap.

It works great and should be good fun over the 4th with red, white and blue powder! 

[Geoff]

looks great thanks for sharing

[jus Tom]

This looks like a very cool and fun idea. I have some brass threaded on tire valves,, may have to experiment on one of these of my own. Thanks for sharing.