(WI) A Booming Business

[Drizzt]

Copyright 2002 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


December 1, 2002 Sunday
SECTION: LIFESTYLE; Pg. 01L

HEADLINE: A BOOMING BUSINESS;
Appleton man fuels his passion for things that shoot far

BYLINE: DAN EGAN

BODY:
Appleton -- Ever wonder what became of that kid in high school who loved shop class, souped-up Chevy Camaros and metal bands like Quiet Riot?

He was the pyromaniac who later got hooked on Wave Runners and paintball. The one who used to get his kicks zipping down a pulley on a rope tied between the top of his farm's silo and a tree below.

Well, he got a job at a factory that makes machines that make sanitary napkins and diapers. Then he became a journeyman electrician, and worked for a while at a foundry that makes manhole covers. While grunge was the rage in the '90s, he tried to start an '80s-style "big hair" rock band. Then he found his calling -- building cannons that shoot potatoes.

Or superballs.

Or beer bottles.

Meet Appleton's Joel Suprise, the Marlboro-puffing, Mountain Dew-chugging 28-year-old owner of the Spudgun Technology Center.

Eight months ago, he was just a regular Joel slaving away at the Neenah Foundry. Then one night surfing the Internet, he stumbled on a Web site dedicated to his latest hobby -- plastic cannons that fire anything imaginable and use aerosol deodorant sprays or compressed air for fuel.

Amazing, he thought. Here was a guy down in Texas that actually made a living off this stuff. More amazing still, the guy had the place up for sale.

"I can make money off that," Suprise said to himself.

So, much to his then-fiance's initial chagrin, he scrapped his plans to add a bathroom on their house and scraped together $70,000 to buy the company name, Web site, equipment and all its "intellectual property."

Don't laugh, a lot of science goes into these high-tech toys. One of the tools he purchased, for example, is a specially designed machine that carves rifling grooves into the PVC tubes that are used for cannon barrels. That makes for a straighter shot. The biggest of those guns can fire full 20-ounce pop bottles almost a half-mile.

But people did snicker, particularly his buddies at the foundry.

"Are you cracked?" Suprise remembers being asked. "But they didn't laugh for long . . . they could all see how fast things were picking up for me."

Why?

Before we proceed, let's answer a few quick questions.

ARE THESE THINGS DANGEROUS?

Absolutely.

But Suprise says the danger only comes when they are used incorrectly or inappropriately. By inappropriately he means they should never be pointed at anything you don't want to destroy, and they should only be used in open spaces where nothing beyond the intended target can be damaged.

By incorrectly, he means only recommended fuels should be used for his "combustion" cannons. A quick blast of Right Guard deodorant inside the chamber at the base of the barrel is what Suprise recommends. He says it is impossible to overcharge the gun with deodorant because if too much gas is put into the chamber, a lack of oxygen will keep it from firing.

High-powered fuels like acetylene should never be used.

Suprise notes his air-powered, or pneumatic, cannons come with a safety valve to prohibit zealous gunners from overfilling the chamber and blowing their guns (and, perhaps, selves) to pieces.

Suprise takes great care -- and never drinks beer -- while assembling the guns, which are constructed with materials that are pressure-rated to withstand the explosions.

Suprise also maintains a Web site that instructs people on safety issues related to the cannons (www.spudtech.com), and he says he will never knowingly sell to a person under the age of 18.

"Those things are basically as safe as the person using them," he says of his spudguns. "I've not had anything that I've built fail due to an error on my part."

OK. Now a question for Suprise from some of our female readers:

WHY DO YOU MAKE THESE THINGS? AND WHY DO PEOPLE BUY THEM?

"If it goes bang and flies farther than you can throw it, guys love it," says Suprise.

Now a question from our male readers:

HOW MUCH DO THEY COST?

The cheapest combustion model sells for about $60. It is basically a tube with a gas-grill ignition button for a trigger. The most high-tech, air-powered cannons -- the kind that shoot T-shirts into the stands at ball games -- start at about $500.

Nobody is precisely sure of the spudgun's origins, but Suprise figures its roots twist back several decades to the days of steel beer cans, and the men who drank from them.

"If all these cans were securely taped together to make a long tube, the tennis ball could be stuck down it muzzle loader style and fired by putting a small amount of gasoline in the bottom can (with the hole lid as the breech) and one brave soul (the one that had consumed the most beers) holding a lighted match or lighter near the peel-top hole. Miraculously the tennis ball was expelled with great velocity. Much whooping and hollering ensued," reads the history section on Suprise's Web site.

Suprise knew about these guns as a kid, but they never seemed complicated enough to grab his attention.

As a teenager, he did build a gunpowder-fired cannon that could shoot a golf ball a mile, and by his mid-20s had started to dabble in what some have referred to as the spudgun "movement."

Then he found the spudtech Web site, and it changed his life.

Suprise says the business has taken off beyond his expectations. During a good month, he sells around 90 guns, and sales have picked up in recent weeks thanks to what he refers to as "The Article."

That would be a story that appeared in a recent GQ magazine that proclaims Suprise "The Henry Ford of spudgunning" for his success in bringing the device to the masses.

In a twisted way, Suprise has the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to thank for the free publicity.

He got hooked on CNN once the war on terrorism got under way. One night he was watching two guys bicker away on "Crossfire" when he recognized the name under the dweeby-looking young guy with the bow tie -- Tucker Carlson.

Suprise remembered he sold some cannons to a Tucker Carlson in the Washington, D.C., area. He e-mailed him and asked if he was the same guy. Turns out he is, and Suprise says the two became fast friends over the Internet.

Carlson made a trip to Appleton last February and the two spent a night together drinking (Suprise has his own still) and a day together testing new guns at the Suprise family farm near Sheboygan.

In the GQ article, Carlson anoints Suprise as an "evangelist for the potato-cannon movement."

It is a movement that is still unregulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (three of Suprise's favorite things) but, as Carlson notes, recently the guns have come under increased scrutiny.

"There's no question that many ordinary citizens, if they knew what Midwestern teenagers were doing with PVC pipe, might be concerned," he writes.

On his Web site, Suprise does encourage potential customers to "please check with your local authorities. Some cities say NO to using them in the city limits."

Sitting in his garage workshop and screwing and gluing together a special-order gun destined for a woman in Utah (a gift for her brother), Suprise says he is not worried about the future of his industry.

If anything, he frets things will get too big.

"I know at some point, I'll probably need to bring some help in, but I'm not looking forward to it," he says.

Right now, he is humming along just fine. He works 60 to 100 hours a week assembling guns, responding to e-mail and counseling customers over the phone. On the wall and under the fluorescent lights of his windowless back room shop, there is a big white clock -- the kind that hang on classroom walls -- to occasionally remind him he might want to think about going to bed.

His only employee is his recent bride Jane Pelzel. She helps cut the PVC in her spare time. She is a pharmacy technician and a captain in the National Guard preparing to be shipped overseas. She can't say where she is going, but she does have a hard time lifting the PVC because her arm is sore from an anthrax vaccination shot she recently received.

The couple's pending separation seems like the only bad break in a remarkably lucky run for Suprise. He has his dream job. No bosses. No timecards. No commute.

He has neighbors who not only tolerate but embrace his home-based business, even if they do have to live with the occasional bangs and booms coming from the backyard.

"He's quite the little scientist, I'll tell you that," says neighbor Jerry Arnold.

The local police even cut him some slack.

"They stopped over once and were, like, 'This is cool,' " Pelzel says.

Suprise plans on doing this for at least 5 or 10 years.

Beyond that, his ambitions sound a bit ominous.

"I will probably sell this for an enormous profit, and then go on to something bigger and better."

But now there is still work to be done. Converts to be converted. Cannons to shoot.

Suprise takes a visitor into his backyard to show what his guns can do. He notes one of his bigger cannons can fire a tennis ball out of sight. It takes 23 seconds for it to return to earth.

He drops a tennis ball down the barrel of this smaller gun and aims straight up. He pulls the trigger. THWUMP.

The ball rockets up until it turns into a black fleck against the gray November sky. Then it begins to drift down. It smacks off the roof of his house and hits with a thud on the hood of Pelzel's car.

"Ahh! That's my new car. Probably the only new car I'll ever own," she yells.

Suprise doesn't look too worried.

He notes it's a Saturn, and yells "They're dent resistant."