Here at Hackaday, we’re all about repurposing old items you no longer use. Reader [Liquider] wrote in to share his latest creation, a coil gun built from an old Airsoft pistol.

He removed a handful of components from the pistol and installed a 800 uF/300V capacitor inside the grip. A small storage compartment was added under the barrel, which houses the AA battery he uses to drive the circuit. A modified reloading mechanism makes it easy to drop a metal projectile right in front of the coil before firing.

Once the pistol is charged up, a switch installed behind the trigger discharges the cap, creating a magnetic pulse that accelerates the metal projectile forward. [Liquider] estimates that the kinetic energy produced by the coil is 0.1 Joules, which fires of the slug at a reasonable speed.

Continue reading to see a quick video demo of the pistol in action.