Ok maybe someone could help with this question. I know the teams do not find out what they are supposed to try and build until the morning of the show. But are they allowed to walk around the Junkyard beforehand just to take a look around? You could say just taking a look around the parts shop. I would consider that a great advantage before you start building any type of machine, to have some idea of the parts layout. Thanks for any info on this, if anyone knows.

-- Cooley (sisder@ipa.net), January 04, 2001

Answers

No. You might catch something while you are filming the opening, but very little.

-- justjay-Captain-Three Rusty Juveniles (justjay@neo.rr.com), January 04, 2001.

It was STRONGLY hinted in one of last night's shows that the experts have had a chance to look around. Either that, or they were covering for the fact that they know what some of the seeded parts are.

+Chris

-- Chris Rake (car@technologist.com), January 04, 2001.

The experts provide the producers with a list of the parts necessary to construct a given device, which will work only if their plan is followed to the letter. the producers see to it all the parts are available, although not necessarily as requested.For instance we needed a compressor, there were a half a dozen we would have loved to use, but they were all junk. I don't believe they knew how bad they were. there were supposed to be flanges to weld on the pipes, none existed that could be used, so we made them.

-- justjay-Captain-Three Rusty Juveniles (justjay@neo.rr.com), January 04, 2001.

--Quote On-- the producers see to it all the parts are available, although not necessarily as requested.For instance we needed a compressor, there were a half a dozen we would have loved to use, but they were all junk. I don't believe they knew how bad they were. there were supposed to be flanges to weld on the pipes, none existed that could be used, so we made them. --Quote Off-

Isn't that the point? If it was going to be an easy matter of just bolting together a bunch of parts, it wouldn't be as entertaining. After all, the name of the show is JUNKyard wars. :)

-- Robert Klace (artlover.thebox@netzero.com), January 06, 2001.

Some of the parts are seeded for safety reasons as well, like the "tank" that we used, which, not to our knowlege had been used on a previously filmed show for the same purpose. We would have loved to have modified a tank for the cannon, but as none of us has a pressure vessel welding certificate in the UK, we had to use the hydrostatted pipe section that they furnished, period, end of discussion. We did however manage to slip by with having "Poppa Smurf" weld up the eight X ten inch adapter, and weld the flange on the barrell pipe. Go figure? It took me about 1/2 of a rod to blow the line fuse on the stick welder, as I wanted to weld at 175 amps. I like to weld heavy stuff with plenty of puddle and good penetration. We also ran out of oxygen, as no one had checked the tanks before the build day. We could not use the really smooth bore yellow plastic pipe, because we could not "safely" attach it to the valve. There were a number of things that didn't go as we wanted, but we stayed on the problems, and got a fun cannon built. I would have liked to pump it up with a power compressor to about five times the pressure we were using for the competetion for one last shot just to show what the machine was capable of doing. None of the above is whining though. We all had what was likely one of the greatest times ever while we were there, and everyone we met there treated us with first class hospitality and respect. Somehow in the final cut, it came across like the team was there to please me. This was not the case, as I could have been vetoed by Jay at any point in the build. My desire was to have all of us enjoy working on building an effective piece of pumpkin artillery. Jay and team did an excellent job of engineering the bike arrangment, and making the rest of the thing work right. A big, fast valve is the key item in any effective air gun, and RDF staff went to great lengths to make sure we had one to work with. I was honestly sweating ball bearings when we were that late in the build day before the trigger valve showed up. I was thinking about recommending that we go with a burst gasket at the time the guys found the trigger. All of us are over fifty, and that is a big day on the set, even if we were all younger we would have been tired out. I don't think we did enough in the education dept. but maybe they just don't want kids trying their hand at cannon building at home. There is a lot about an air cannon that deals with math and physics. Yes, I got a quick walk-thru in the yard the day before the build, but was not allowed to go out of the shop area the day of the build except to help bring the barrell in. In a pile of scrap that big, there is not time to focus on the individual items in one walk around.

-- Waddy Thompson (cthomp3851@aol.com), January 07, 2001.