Sorry, no pic of the shoulder-held.
Posted on 09/28/2005 5:54:44 PM PDT by Shermy
Ron Dell'Osso is the king of splat when it comes to pumpkins.
Nearly 100,000 people will make a pilgrimage to his family's pumpkin patch during October starting Saturday. Sure, they enjoy the 40-acre corn maze as well as the numerous wholesome activities such as tricycle races and hay rides. And they probably will end up buying a pumpkin or two.
But the real draw are 10 pumpkin blasters. The air-powered weapons of mass pumpkin destruction can hurl a miniature gourd at speeds in excess of 110 mph for upwards of 200 yards.
The quarter-inch steel targets that shooters aim at have to be junked each year because the pumpkins splattering against them riddle the steel with dents. And if you don't think one of those mini-pumpkins aren't as hard as a rock, try to smash one by slamming it on the ground.
In reality, the blasters are more powerful than the somewhat tamer version the public shoots. Dell'Osso had to make sure the quarter-inch steel on the double-barreled device was designed with safety in mind after one of the original PVC prototypes "blew up" in his face due to built up pressure from compressed air.
It costs $5 for a bucket of ammo -- about 12 mini pumpkins.
One of Dell'Osso's blaster prototypes -- a shoulder held model -- sent a miniature pumpkin into sub-orbit the first time he fired it from outside his barn. The hand-held PVC version sent a mini-pumpkin well over 600 feet and got it enough attitude to clear the five-story brick silos that are visible from Interstate 5 at the Dell'Osso Farms off Mathney Road.
Dell'Osso was careful to craft the blaster to look like a real weapon right down to its shape and camouflage paint scheme.
Two years ago when he invited the Air Force, Marines, Navy and Army to send representatives for a friendly competition before the blasters debuted to the public, officers from all four branches of the military were amazed at how real the blasters looked. The Air Force, by the way, won the competition.
By the time Dell'Osso Farms closes down for the season on the night of Halloween, roughly 150,000 mini-pumpkins will be sacrificed in the name of fun.
"You could say I'm one of the few people who grow my own ammo," Dell'Osso said.
Making the 10 pumpkin blasters wasn't cheap. Essential internal fabrications that are encased in a metal box cost $5,000 apiece. He's had numerous requests to borrow the blasters. In response, Dell'Osso is trying to patent his blasters
Dell'Osso isn't the first to devise a contraption to shoot pumpkins through the air. He is the first, however, to come up with a device that the general public can use.
"The place back East that has them fires bigger pumpkins through the air that you can watch," Dell'Osso said. "After about a half hour or so you'll probably thinking to yourself what's the big deal since you can't fire them off yourself."
Fruit is a scare commodity around the Dell'Osso household when he gets in an experimenting mood.
He has discovered that oranges "are the perfect ammo."
After his initial year of having the blasters at the pumpkin patch, he decided he wanted to have an automatic clip feeding 10 pumpkins at a time. It worked well using oranges in the winter but when the time came around last year to load the mini-pumpkin ammo it kept jamming.
"Oranges are almost perfectly shaped," Dell'Osso said.
They also are the best ammo. Dell'Osso and his friends one year bought oranges by the case at Costco so they could splatter them on the side of moving semi-trucks well over 500 feet away.
One of the 10 blasters is rigged as an automatic firing off a pumpkin every few seconds.
The double-barreled blaster operates by the bottom pipe filling up with compressed air. When the trigger is released, a value sends the air into the upper pipe that then pushes the pumpkin out at speeds in excess of 110 mph.
The desire to make such a weapon actually started when Dell'Osso was an 11 year-old.
"When I was a kid my mother always had us at Christmas circle eight or 10 toys we wanted from a catalogue and she'd pick out our gift from those," Dell'Osso recalled. "Since my brother and our buddies always played Army and had war games, I saw a bazooka like toy gun I had to have. So as not to take a chance, I only circled that one. That year was the year that I only got clothes for Christmas."
The failure to get the desired toy was tucked away in the back of his mind until three years ago.
"December and January aren't busy times for us around the farm," said Dell'Osso. "I was laying around the house and got to thinking I wanted to make one that could shoot pumpkins."
The original prototype was fashioned from PVC pipe and other odds and ends from around the barn. When he went to fire it, the pumpkin went a disappointing three feet.
Dell'Osso put it aside but within a few days he was back in the barn monkeying around with the blaster.
When he got the prototype that worked, he went to Milan Brothers in Stockton and had Butch Serrano -- a man Dell'Osso calls a "real craftsman" with metal -- design a steel version that was as realistic looking as possible. The valves had to be special ordered out of Philadelphia to make the blaster work.
Dell'Osso and his brother Mike spent their childhood until they entered high school playing war games around the twin n brick silos and barn.
"It was an ideal place to be a kid," Dell'Osso said.
They kept what Dell'Osso, 49, called "detailed records" with teams headed by Mike and teams headed by Ron splitting the roughly 160 wars they had almost 50-50.
If Dell'Osso had the pumpkin blaster back then, he figures he would have easily been the ruling super power.
Dell'Osso credits his mother Sharon Smith with giving him the impetus to design the pumpkin blaster by not getting him the toy bazooka for Christmas.
"I never forgot how bad I wanted it," Dell'Osso said of the toy bazooka.
... ...
For more information, go to the website at www.pumpkinmaze.com
Sorry, no pic of the shoulder-held.
Splat.
pumpkin blaster pong
After
Let's hear it for the 2nd Ammendment! Hip, hip, hooray!
I like this guy.
Memo to self: Don't get into a snowball fight with this man.
They can have my pumpkin blaster when they pry it out of my cold, dead, pumpkin-guts coated fingers!
When they outlaw pumkin blasters than only outlaws will get to have fun blasting the $#@* out of broken down vans!
Were real proud of these Michigan boys.
http://www.secondamendmentgun.us/
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