Make:

It must be said that condoms provide superior fire power over ballons due to the higher quality of the material.

Jake.
My Projects

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What's a film can?

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Jake- condoms also require a longer draw length to get the equivalent power. And trust me, a balloon is quite powerful, at least if you take my modification.

A much simpler version of this involves lopping the top off of a soda bottle. Stretch the balloon over the screw top, and you now have a rigid barrel that is ribbed, holding the balloon in place, eliminating even the optional need for a rubber band.

I made these in high school, and when used with BBs, they could be pretty painful, or so I was told.

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If no film can available, or digital equivelent, then cut the neck off a plastic bottle works just as well.

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I had trouble with the plastic bottle. Couldn't find the right size balloon. While I was cutting it, though, I realized how easy it would be to repurpose ordinary plastic bottles into squeeze bottles or nut/bolt joints.

In the last photo on the linked site you can see how these make great "skins" for film cans. I bet you could still put film inside, and you'd have cute rubberized pink film cans! (Not that I would use those myself.)

Also, you can still blow up the balloon after putting it on the film can. Combining that with the bottle neck idea might result in some cool "release valves" for balloons to be used in other projects.

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