legal and technical Question about Gauss Rifles

[Critical1]

first would it be legal for me to build one? I live in Washington state

and be would the following design work

(based loosely from this site http://sci-toys.com/scitoys/scitoys/magnets/gauss.html)

ring magnets, 3/4 innner diam. several of them, in series with a 1/2 inner diam pvp tube down the center
each magnet will have a holder to keep the 2 balls on the second side of the magnet so launching a ball will set off the same kind of event that the above site has only much easier to load and cycle rounds through.

any chance of this working? we are thinking of 1/2 steel balls, either as ammo or the last ball will hit a piston and transfer the energy to a smaller round bb's or something like that.

[matt]

Legally I have no idea, but the scitoys design clearly works (one of my favourite sites!)

Note that it is a demonstration toy, and you could probably put more energy into a ball bearing with a hefty rubber band.

Your idea is a scaled-up version using large ring magnets. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work, but you might do better with a hard steel rod fixed in the middle of each ring magnet, rather than two ball bearings in a holder. Rollers from a roller bearing would work nicely. They would act as striking anvils, and if you place them asymetrically you could dispense with one ball from each of the pairs (one flat end should lie in the centre of each ring magnet, and the other should protrude towards the next magnet.) You may have to play with the spacing to find the optimum performance.

Your half-inch pvc would have to be a half-pipe to reset the arrangement, but that would be the case anyway.

I don't think you'll end up with anything that'll outdo a hunting slingshot, but you never know. Have fun!

[Bear_Nenno]

Legally, it will be on par with BB guns and spear guns. So dont do anything with it you wouldn't do with a BB gun and you'll be fine.

[Critical1]

Originally Posted by matt

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work, but you might do better with a hard steel rod fixed in the middle of each ring magnet, rather than two ball bearings in a holder.

nice idea!

and yeah I had plans to cut a groove down the side but the nice thing about using freefloating balls is that you could just advance the balls after each shot. the initial ball would become the first one struck on the next shot.

gonna play with this over the summer when my son is up.

[2nd Law]

When I was much younger, I somehow acquired an electromagnet from Edmund Scientific, probably for a Christmas present (they seem to still make them, you can see it here ).
I used it as it was intended for some time. However, at some point I had an electronic flash unit for a camera that quit working due to a burnt out bulb, and after taking it apart I figured out how to charge the relatively large capacitor in it, and subsequently zap things with it. One day I hooked it up to the electromagnet, and upon discharge the entire magnet jumped.
“Cool!” I thought. Now what could I do with this?
The electromagnet, if you look at the picture, has a threaded hole down the center, which is used to connect an eyebolt. I removed the bolt, put a small bar magnet in the hole, charged it up and fired.
The small bar magnet (like the one in the center of the picture here ) jumped about six feet straight up.
I always thought it would be pretty cool to get about 20 of the electromagnet/capacitor combinations, line them up, and somehow set it up so they would fire in sequence. However, as the electromagnets cost over 50 bucks each, justifying that kind of expenditure to myself has not yet happened.
Wikipedia would call what I’m talking about a coilgun .