For slingfest uk on june 29th I figure I'm going to need at least several hundred near-identical and reasonably aerodynamic missiles just for the target shooting. So I'm going to have to make them myself :-)
Hence the need for a giant pill roller.

So I've been to my local hardware store and bought some plastic pipe. They didn't stock anyting as large in diameter as a golf ball. I ended up with white (so I can see where I've marked it - the black looked sharper but was less practical) 40mm diameter drainage pipe.
2 metres for £1.48. Cheap enough I think you'll agree :-)
I figure I can make a seven or eight lane roller and still have the piece I need to make the sausages.
40mm cement balls should be a good size and weight for target shooting. Slightly smaller but heavier than a golfball.

I've worked out the design (in my head) also a design for a little gadget to mark the exact centre of a half pipe piece. I've even found the bandsaw blades I'd lost so I can fit a finer blade than the heavy duty thing I use for wood. I've worked out how to remove the sausage from the pipe and transfer the sausage to the roller and hold the two halves of the roller exactly over each other while rolling.
I even found some chipboard to use as a base (might not use it - we'll see)

So I just need to build it now. Pictures and progress report as an when I have them :-)  

cut each 15cm section in half lengthways - use a bandsaw if you have one - if not, good luck.  But it really does need to be quite precise.
I certainly couldn't cut all ten sections by hand well enough - but then I didn't have to :-)

Once cut you need to use some rough sand paper - I used 120 grit - to remove all the fuzzy plastic edges.

next you need two pieces of wood 40 cm in length. In the spirit of my usual 'just make stuff from crap in your workshop' I used a piece of pallet wood from the big-box-of-odd-bits-of-wood-in-the-corner.
You would probably be better off with wood slightly less wide than the pipe (14cm) but, hey that would have broken the use-crap-lying-around rule.

Use a long thin nail to make your first hole (use the guide line marked in the previous section) and then nail the first section parellel to the end of the plank with a shorter nail. Add a second nail to the first and last section. You can add extra nails to the middle sections - but I didn't bother.

Okay next I cut the wood bases exactly level with the sides of the tube and nailed and glued a couple of wings on the side of one section [i](curtesy of the big box of bits again, see end of article for pic)[/i] - hereby called the BOTTOM :-) Your pill roller is now done. Put the top piece in and make sure it slides up and down freely - and yes it did, I was amazed lol.

Okay next we need a plunger to help push the cement out of the tube once it's full of cement.
I got a bit carried away and used  apiece of metal tubing and turned a wooden plug. As it turned out this was pretty useless lol. And I ended up using a bit of chopped down star rod I got from the Big box of bits.
So the rule for the plunger is make sure the end diameter is a lot less than the plastic tube. I made my fancy plunger too tight a fit.

Okay - here's what i did wrong and you don't do :-)

1) 40mm is too big. I'll go back to b&q tomorrow and see if they've got some 30 mm pipe.

2) When you buy your mortar mix, make sure you get a dry premixed mixture and not a bag of wet sand and a seperate bag of cement that had more lumps in it than powder.

The texture and consistency of the sausage mix is pretty crucial. Too dry and it just crumbles, too wet and it makes ovals not rounds.
I'm going to dry the sand out and try making a mixture with just pva and a little water.

bear in mind a pill roller will also work well for clay and quite probably mud as well. It's all down to texture.

All in all the experiment to date has cost me less than £5 (including mortar and big bottle of pva glue). And I now know what I did wrong this time [i](not as much as I'd have thought lol)[/i]  and what to do next time (and so do you :-)
Soon as I've made the smaller version I'll post pics.
And yes I am intending to spray paint the final missiles flourescent colours.

Oh yeah (as promised) here's the most useful item in my workshop (after the bandsaw) the big box
of odd bits :-)

ps. Thanks ethan - he and I know what for lol

c.a.

Your results are worth the effort. As I said before, standardizing the ammo removes a major variable. Just use discretion when putting a return address on them.

tom      
    

I must be slow..I wasn't sure what you were doing.Uniformity?Excellent effort!!