Using gases other than air to power a rifle
I copied this from the Rapid forum…
Mr T Doe said (in his usual tones)
Quote
During the past couple of weeks I’ve spoken to two people who advocated the use of gases other than air in precharged pneumatics. One of them told me that ‘all my mates use……..’ and he named two gasses which he claimed ‘improved’ the performance of his gun.
I asked both callers which other gasses they’d tried, and one had tried oxygen, the other ‘knew someone’ who had used acetylene. I kid you not. Both of these morons also claimed that they knew what they were doing with gasses. Both were told in no uncertain terms what their status really was, and I suspect both put down the phone with a very much reduced opinion of me.
Now, for at least the tenth time since the BBS has existed, can we nail this one right here, right now?
Forget the alleged ‘advantages’ of one gas over another, forget the ‘but this gas is inert’ protestations and forget completely any idiotic notions of me, and the airgun industry, wishing to hold back the march of progress. The fact is, experimentation with gases other than air WILL lead to someone getting severely injured and possibly killed.
The guns are already out-shooting us by miles and air-power is safe, manageable and perfectly capable of providing all we need. Sticking with divers’ quality compressed air ONLY, keeps the safety message clear and un-muddied by life or death lessons in chemistry.
Please, stay safe, promote safety and never join the ranks of the dangerously moronic. Above all, never, ever use anything but clean, dry air in a precharged pneumatic airgun.
Sorry about the sermon, but I’d rather bore you than leave you open to the influence of potential Darwin award winners.
Terry
While Ben Taylor replied with this……and the pic Milo has posted
Quote
Some idiot suggested to Terry that the MK 1 Rapid torn apart by the effects of a fill of OXYGEN was created just to warn off would be users, I can catagoricaly state that it was not and so could the user if he saw this thread.
I now have this rifle so if any of you are in any doubt about the harmfull effects of OXYGEN feel free to cal lin and see for your selves.
All Replies
Never tried helium in an air gun though heard about it. It expands to atmospheric WAY quicker than air, hence the power. Would you come from an afternoon of shooting sounding like pinky and perky?? 😆
how about helium. those guy from russia site that was posted here used it. 🙄 they were power nuts and getting speeds to 1600 with helium. but anyhow why would you want oxygen it is a larger atom than nitrogen anyways. and acetylene explodes above 29 psi, all i can say people are stupid
And equally, can you imagine how dim someone must be to say nitrogen is UNSAFE!!??
Compressed air is mostly nitrogen with some OXY in it.
Nitrogen is all Nitrogen with the OXY removed!!
You tell me which is the safer…. 🙄
Nitrogen gas is safe. Nitrogen gas from a 6000psi bottle that is easily available to Joe Blow from just about any welding supply can be deadly when the proper stainless fittings, regulator and paintball quality hoses are used 😉 . Talk about your run-on sentence….geeesh! I’m willing to bet that a person can take their 4500 psi SCBA tank and accidently fuck up and put 4500 to their airgun tank or airtube and probably be ok. 6000psi from a nitrogen bottle to an airtube, probably going to have a bad day. Or, I’m 100% sure that somewhere, there is some dumb ass who heard that nitrogen was safe for his airgun. So he manages to get his hands on some nitrogen. LIQUID nitrogen!
Of course some idiot with a 6000psi tank could do himself serious harm 😆 Lots of guys here use 4500psi carbon fiber tanks with air and could also do some serious harm filling a vessel rated alot lower. We are talking about the inherent safty of gases, not how some asshole applies it.., 🙄 Liquid nitrogen, now your talking my language 😀
I used to install bulk liquid nitogen tanks. Maybe we could explain about how to boil it off first before attempting to fill, show them round an evaporater and explain about the dangers of pipe expansion and contraction, give some advice on pigtails and the like…..not. You can’t hold everybodies hands all the time. You give the correct info and how people use that info is down to them. Geeesh.
And equally, can you imagine how dim someone must be to say nitrogen is UNSAFE!!??
Compressed air is mostly nitrogen with some OXY in it.
Nitrogen is all Nitrogen with the OXY removed!!
You tell me which is the safer…. 🙄
Nitrogen gas is safe. Nitrogen gas from a 6000psi bottle that is easily available to Joe Blow from just about any welding supply can be deadly when the proper stainless fittings, regulator and paintball quality hoses are used 😉 . Talk about your run-on sentence….geeesh! I’m willing to bet that a person can take their 4500 psi SCBA tank and accidently fuck up and put 4500 to their airgun tank or airtube and probably be ok. 6000psi from a nitrogen bottle to an airtube, probably going to have a bad day. Or, I’m 100% sure that somewhere, there is some dumb ass who heard that nitrogen was safe for his airgun. So he manages to get his hands on some nitrogen. LIQUID nitrogen!
A co-worker once made a dry ice bomb but did not add enough water.. It sat
in the parking lot for hrs without exploding… He had the idea to run the front
tire of his Ford F250 Power Stroke Diesel over the bottle but then thought it
might be a bad idea because it could blow something up or break his truck.
Smart guy right? So he gets out of his truck and kicks the bottle….
Cablaooooweeeeeee… Friggin dumbass….lol…. I laughed for days… His toe
was numb for weeks…..
IF you can fashion a top hat out of flint stone, I think you could really get the
FPS up to 1,000FPS or so with that combination…. Maybe more.. 😯
😆
Vandals used to fill ballons with actelyne and tape a piece of paper to them and then put them in a bus shelter or a phone booth then light it, it would blow the wall off the shelter.
Now why would any sane person put that in a pcp and hold it next to their head @ 3000PSI?
One of the true things in life is that education does not come cheap, read this thread and save a lot of capital.
Roachcreek
I’m currently trying Methane. The valve tophat REALLY hurts my ring piece, and the fill pressure is not quite as high as I would like, but I’m guessing more cabbage water and dodgy chinese food should improve matters… 😎
later
LMAO… Survival of the brightest…lol
It’s natures natural selection of weeding out the morons – fill away with acetylene, oxygen, propane, propylene, or anything else you can compress idiots !!
later
Its a mighty explosion thing. liquefied CO2 at “normal room temperature” will show about ~850psi where as HPA is normally 3000psi +. So if you start filling a CO2 bottle as you would a air bottle it tends to result in a spectacular failure. There are other issues to do with with the way things react with pressured air. Though its not really a issue in these application.
Is this a pressure thing or a combustion thing? 😯
😕
“Any gas other than air.” Would this exclude Nitrogen? CO2 😕
I can understand the need to keep folks from using oxygen and other explosive gasses but to say nothing other than air is vague and unusual when manufacturers recommend compressed gasses other than air.
Thanks mamcrackin, Safety is an ongoing process. All of us need a good kick into the reality of the results of carelessness…! Yes we all become careless with time.
I became aware of the danger of oxygen fires with the Apollo capsule tragedy. And later in safety training for oxy Acetylene torch.
Last was cockpit egress and safety training in the Airforce. But I have to say that 100% pure oxygen from the cockpit knocked out those hangover headaches, though………..! 🙁 🙂 😀 😆
Sam
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
I heard somewhere (YN maybe?) that the problem people were having with helium was the atoms were so small they couldn’t get the tanks to stop leaking.
Has anyone here tried propane? That may work well. Hydrogen is another good one to test out.
Don’t forget springer idiots though!! I remember seeing a guy on youtube showing people how to get lots of power through not-so-powerful springers. He was squirting wd-40 (or something equally flammable) into the piston chamber. It was spitting fire out of the muzzle. Great idea guy….