Some of us have weekend projects like cleaning out the garage, but people like Ziggy Zee (zebralemur on Reddit) spend their weekends building mammoth DIY railguns the likes of which you've never seen.

As explained in a post on Imgur, this giant 27,000 joule mag-cannon comes in two parts, the 50-pound barrel and firing mechanism and a 200-pound bank of 56 400-volt, 6000-microfarad capacitors. According to its makers, that makes it the most powerful railgun ever to be made by an organization that isn't a country.

Zee and friends have been working on the project for over two years, and their recent test firings are documented in a series of YouTube videos where they use the cannon to shoot at phones, pumpkins, cars, ballistic gel, and plates. Here are a few highlights from the post on Imgur:

This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

For the most part, Zee's railgun operates on the very same principle that the Navy is using to build its "electric cannon" but on a smaller scale. This model also has a little extra pep in its step. To get the projectile going, the cannon first uses CO2 to shove the projectile into the electrified barrel, where the standard principles of a railgun take over until it bursts from the barrel in a semi-molten state. That gives it a short range, but Zee notes on Reddit that he's already working on finned, tungsten projectiles. And even in its current state, it packs a bit more of a punch than some of the other DIY railguns we've seen.

You can read more about the construction of the gun on Imgur, or watch a couple of the test videos to get even more detail on what makes this particular DIY cannon work. But one thing is for sure: This ain't no puny potato gun.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Source: Reddit, Imgur

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io