Air powered tree access must try!

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Stihl4life

Location
27427 petersburg rd
I used a air tire bead seater and put a 2 ft piece of 1 1/2 aluminum pipe on it and put only 145 psi in and put a 12 oz throwbag in it. Very impressive. I shot it at some truck tires we had it the shop about 30 feet away and it exploaded the bag. I bet it would have easily shot it 300 ft straight up. The bead seater is on amazon for 99 bucks
 
When you’re on a job site how do you fill the air tank?

I put a tee with a screw type gate valve which had a quick connect in the airline in my clam truck. The handle for the valve was removed when the air wasn’t needed. As I am typing I wonder if this is legal though
 
Tom hoffman uses co2. I use a good quality bicycle pump and can get 160psi in it. I built mine and it has a 1 inch butterfly valve and 1 inch x 4 foot air chamber and 1 1/2 inch x2 foot barrell. All alum pipe. Air chamber is schedual 80.today i shot a 14 oz vinyl wesspur bag.it went over 3 90 foot trees and took my throwline bag to the top of the first tree with 180 zing it line. I have well under $100 bucks in material. Way better than my big shot and should last forever.
 
I'm confused...OP is about a tire bead sweater (5 gallons?).... looks like those are ball valves? Next post is about one you built with a schedule 80 chamber and a butterfly valve, but it sounds like you are talking about 1 device. Is this 2 separate or one with a bead sweater and a second chamber and valve? Or is there a schedule 80 bead sweater with butterfly valve?
 
I built this thing just to test the principle and with 75 psi (all I was going to put in sch 40) it shot over a hundred feet.
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I had built a PVC one too using a sprinkler valve. I like the Big Shot better. Al would be better than PVC. Some will say PVC is a death trap...but that is a little hyperbolic. It is NOT rated for air, but a split is far more likely than a shattering explosion. When I saw the USFS engineers made their 2×4 launcher out of PVC I was a little less concerned. I think its bigger likelyhood of failure comes as it ages and you cycle the tank hundreds of times - but I'm still not convinced that is catastrophic failure. I'd only be concerned with shattering if it is frozen. I don't use it anymore...so I'm not too concerned one way or the other.
 
ATH said:
I'm confused...OP is about a tire bead sweater (5 gallons?).... looks like those are ball valves? Next post is about one you built with a schedule 80 chamber and a butterfly valve, but it sounds like you are talking about 1 device. Is this 2 separate or one with a bead sweater and a second chamber and valve? Or is there a schedule 80 bead sweater with butterfly valve?
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I was just messing around with the bead seater. The one i built has the 1 inch air chamber.today i used a bike pump to put 160psi in it and it sent a 14 inch bag over 3 90' trees at once
 
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I have dual VIAIR 480's 200psi compressors anda 7gallon air tank on the truck I use for airing up and down the tires, tools, etc. Been meaning to build one of these and fill with the truck for some time now.Thanks for reminding me.
 
Mine is made out of schedule 80 PVC. I use a Ryobi battery air inflator. The inflator will pump 150psi and while I have tested that pressure many times for demonstration purposes, I rarely need more than 100 PSI to reach the top of any tree we have her in Pa. I used a ball valve with a home made wooden handle to make opening the valve quicker and easier. I'm on my third year with it with no problems, its very accurate. I pretty much only use it when I have to hit a small crotch high up and have a tight window.
 
Which would yall recommend? I could buy a tire seater as Stihl4life mentioned and modify it to use as a throw line launcher. Pros: nearly pre-assembled, and ~ $80 total. Cons: it would be heavier and maybe not as cool as what I would make. Or I could build my own launcher out of PVC. Pros: It would be relatively light weight, and it would be designed the way I want it to. Cons: my plans are looking like $90 or more and I have no experience making one of these.
 
I had a longer chamber and kept making it shorter. I was using 4" diameter... 8" length is plenty. I also used 2.5" barrel because it fits a tennis ball perfectly - almost like it was made for shooting tennis balls. But whatever you use for the barrel, you just don't need that big of a chamber - the weight is long gone before all of the air is out of a bigger chamber.
 
I use up to 160 psi and i would never put that in pvc without turning my head. I have a 1.5 iñch alum barrel 24 " long and a 4 ' x 1 inch air chamber and 1 inch butterfly valve and crammed a 14 ounce vinyl throwbag in it and at between 30 & 40 degrees i sent it 96 yards with 180 feet of 2.2 mm of zing it throwline hooked to it.
 
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I was thinking a 2 ft. x 2 in. barrel and 2 ft. x 4 in. for the pressure chamber with an end cap on one end. The other end of the pressure chamber is were my plans started to get complicated. I was thinking a T-fitting with the 4 in. opening in line with the pressure chamber and the 2 in. opening at a 90 degree angle. (I thought I would need the larger pressure chamber and that was the simplest way of connecting the two sizes of pipe.) This makes an awkward L shaped cannon. I thought to improve on the design and make it a little more travel friendly by having a 4 in. screw on plug for the open end of the T-fitting and making the barrel so that it can be unscrewed and stored inside of the pressure chamber. This added a bunch more hardware to the list. I also was worried about the throw bag getting stuck in the ball valve, so I thought to make the ball valve 1-1/4 in. By the time I am done putting together this list I start asking myself why not go with the ready made version.
 
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