This post is a bit of a diversion from the normal electronic fangling, but it's such an easy and fun project that I wanted to share.
I was flicking through a recent purchase, "The best of instructables (volume 1)" , and I landed on page 232 - "The marshmallow shooter". It's labour day (sorry: "labor day") which means that we were having a lazy Monday at home so we decided to take a trip to Lowes to pick up the necessary bits to make a few shooters.
That's all you need (and some marshmallows). The pipe is 1/2" schedule 40 PVC, it was 89c for about 5 feet of the stuff (enough for 3 shooters). I also picked up a few different fittings: three way junctions, four way junctions, elbows (with different angles), caps and some couplings (to use as mouthpieces). I also picked up a pipe cutter; I've experienced the "joy" of using a hacksaw for cutting pipes (those ones get a brief mention on filthwizardry: music tree) . This time I decided on an easier option.
First off we cut up the pipe into various lengths, short pipe for the handles and longer ones for the main body. We washed all the bits thoroughly.
Here's all the parts that went into our first three guns:
Next up I showed the girls how all the parts fit together. I helped to tighten the parts, but that was all the intervention necessary. It's all very easy and simple. I think I'm going to get a load more of the piping and fittings and just let the kids play with it free-style sometime soon.
After getting all the parts together, they decided their creations needed to be decorated before we could use them :) We had a strange coincidence here: before heading to Lowes we popped into the local Savers (they were having a labor day sale) and what did we find in the book section? A book on making marshmallow guns (here's the Amazon link)! Very weird! Being from Savers, it didn't come with any of the piping, but it did have most of the stickers left (not anymore though!).
Time to try out the beautified guns on Lin.
They had a great time blasting (and eating) the mini marshmallows. The great thing about using marshmallows is that, strangely, there was no mess to clean up afterwards...
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5 comments:
That looks so fun. It's wonderful that you spend quality time with your girls.
Wonderful! Brilliant! This family is just plain brilliant. Imagine what your girls will grow up to do with parents like you and L. Lucky girls! Thank you both for sharing this.
Thanks also for including the price of the piping and everything - I've often thought of browsing Home Depot and Menards sometime for craft inspiration but never sure how much to anticipate spending. That's a better deal than fabric! Why am I buying so much fabric?
I am planning on buying that Instructables book, but want to make the shooters right away. Any chance you want to share the specifics on the pieces you need to get/cut? Thank you so much. love your blog and your wife's as well.
@Kevin
I used 1/2" schedule 40 PVC piping. A 5' pipe was enough to make 3 guns.
For the basic guns you see in the pictures I used 2 end caps (1/2" PVC), one T junction and 3 bits of pipe. I'm not sure how long they were, I just guestimated a good length for each bit.
We've since used the PVC piping for other projects as well. Lots of building outside (tent pole style), weird contraptions thought up by the kids and a clothes rack for the kids dressing up box. Oh, I made a guitar stand as well, but that was a bit arse and got recycled into the clothes rack.
Here's a link to an instructable on building them. The design in this instructable is identical to the one in the book.
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