Capn Antonio Malasses

AYE! We should get each person who's redesigned a room, their backyard or their whole house in a pirate theme to do an mini-sode for our own version of "Cribs". We can call it "Cabins" or "Quarters" LOL! Capn Antonio Malasses

That looks AWESOME!!! We ended up doing a black marble tile look. Right now we're working on the molding then it's on to staining and painting. It looks REALLY nice so far. More pics when it's done. Capn Antonio Malasses

To clarify I would lay a thick sheet of Corian down before doing leatherwork on the bar but I'm still concerned about breaking stone or ceramic tiles. Thanks Capn Antonio Malasses

Ahoy Mates, After a short (ok it was sort of long) hiatus due to the birth of our first little crew member we are back and ready to do some honest Piratin'. First thing's first we must get our ship sea-worthy. I don't believe I've mentioned this yet on these boards but for the past 2 years we've been remodeling out not-so-finished basement into a Pirate-themed living area and bar. The project was tentatively "completed" last year. I say tentatively because last week while sitting around the bar (which I was less then happy with) a crewman mentioned an idea he had for building a better bar. One more suited towards true pirate bashes. A few (camera phone) pics so you get an idea: The front half The stairway The soon to be bar. However I have run into one Major Design Issue! I'm not sure what to do with the bar top. As you can see the room is lacking in color (although that will definitely change with decoration) However I don't think I want to go with a wood looking top. I thought of making a black top and staining the bar base. The issue is I would like to use this surface to do some of my leatherwork too so I need something sturdy and don't want to use tile in fear of breaking them. Any ideas? Thoughts? Obviously cost is an issue (I've already dropped a few grand on this project. But we can build just about anything. Once the bar is done I'll post more pictures and a full review of the basement/bar. Capn Antonio Malasses

As promised here is the video of us firing the CO2 Powered Pirate Cannon. A few notes: 1)We have made a few changes including changing out the PVC sabot for one made out of Boeing Foam. Yes the stuff the use on airplanes. (Don't ask how we got it LOL) The foam cushions the balloons and as well as reduces the strain on the tether. 2) We were able to fire an entire bag of 150 balloons out of one 10 pound CO2 tank. Even we were impressed! We even bumped up the chamber pressure to 120 PSI and fired a onion over 100 yards. 3) Our next task is to add some sort of aiming system. It is more then a bit tough to keep the cannon set at the right angle. And now on to the show: Hope you like it Capn Antonio Malasses

Not the best of pictures but at least most of my costume is showing (sort of). In my defense I was in the crows nest at the time. LOL Capn Antonio Malasses

Thank you all for your responses. I've leaned a great deal from them. It's funny how you'll get the answers you seek if you only ask the question. Capn Antonio Malasses

I can tell you that this would work B-E-A-Utifully as a t-shirt launcher. Depending on how tight you wrap the shirts you may not even need to use a piston or sabot. Here is a diagram of what we ultimately ended up with. Initially we were trying to use an electronic valve put sadly the one we bought was not opening fast enough to give us adequate pressure. A quick run down of a few key components. The CO2 tank we used ran through a regulator which cut the pressure from 1500 down to 60-75 (depending on the distance we wanted. Then we had a shut off valve which allowed us to fill the Pressure Chamber inside the cannon shell and the shut off the CO2 feed so we didn't waste air. Once the Pressure chamber was filled we stuffed the Sabot(piston) and the water balloon into the barrel. Then all you had to do was pull back on the firing valve. This released the pressure chamber and shot out the sabot and water balloon. My initial discussions about this project and a few more schematics I made can be found HERE! Feel free to ask any questions you like. I am very proud of this project and I doubt mind talking about it. Next year we are hoping to have a whole arsenal of CO2 cannons. Capn Antonio Malasses

Our original design had such a valve however we found it wasn't staying open long enough to fire properly. This could have been the valve the I purchased. We may decide to try again with a new valve however for the time being I kind of like the manual release. I didn't get the chance to check out what was going on on the beach. I was stuck in a crows nest doing photo shoots with anyone who dared climb the mast.. LOL! However the cannon fired quite a few shots during the dinghy race. Capn Antonio Malasses