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Posted by NaOH 1 day ago

'Der Viener Schlinger': The meat cannon that launched 20k hot dogs(flatwaterfreepress.org)
78 points | 47 comments
myself248 7 hours ago|
Some years back, I helped build a Twinkie cannon, which was mounted in the front of a Twinkie-decorated car, built on a dune buggy chassis. We had to remove the roll cage to fit the fluffy cake body (made of airbrushed yellow fiberglass insulation), so we made sure to drive it quite slowly, but it was a beast underneath if you wanted it to be. (I once drag-raced a pizza driver, and only afterward noticed the cop on the next streetcorner. Luckily it's hard to write a ticket while doubled-over laughing.)

The CO2-powered cannon was capable of way more power than cellophane-wrapped Twinkies can handle. Dial the regulator up past halfway, and they'd just shred on exiting the barrel, splattering anyone near the front of the car with sticky creamy filling and cake crumbs. That was both messy, and disappointing to folks down-range who'd been hoping to catch a snack. (And it immediately summoned a cleanup crew of seagulls, who then wanted more...)

So we learned to keep it modest, and developed a decent sense of pressure vs range. The car geometry allowed only limited variation of the barrel angle, so it wasn't a full-on GORILLA.BAS experience, but it was pretty close.

Culinary ballistics keeps you young. I highly encourage it.

bombcar 6 hours ago||
It's also true of paintball guns - it's very easy to dial them up strong enough that they just shred the paintballs.
rskeens 6 hours ago|||
Safety wise there is also the Maude Flanders t shirt cannon example from The Simpsons (more of an indirect cause).
4d4m 4 hours ago|||
Neat! May i ask how you got such a unique fabrication and engineering gig?
myself248 2 hours ago||
"Gig" implies paid. Nah. Just for laughs. Because hackerspace.
sellmesoap 3 hours ago||
Frankly HN can be a bit of a sausage fest, but this takes the cake!
Bluestein 19 minutes ago||
I found this very filling, to be frank.-
xg15 9 hours ago||
> In German, “der” means “the.” “Wiener” means “of Vienna (Austria).” Although the English “to sling” probably traces back to Old Norse’s “slynja,” meaning “to hurl,” the German verb “shlingen” means “to wolf or scarf down,” as in food.

Yes, as a German, I was appropriately confused and expected some horrific contraption to get better in hot-dog eating contests or something like that.

But that's nice too.

jareklupinski 8 hours ago||
> In Japan, if you use a word wrong, someone will quietly teach you the correct one. In Texas, I thanked a mechanic by saying "you are a good man of the trucks." He did not correct me. He put it on his voicemail. "You've reached Ray. Good man of the trucks."
SoleilAbsolu 4 hours ago|||
> expected some horrific contraption to get better in hot-dog eating contests or something like that.

KSAAS - Kobayashi Shake As A Service (TM)

rdtsc 54 minutes ago|||
I wouldn't overthink it. It's "parody German": a hot dog slinger but "Germanized", if you will, to be funny

> When he was a standup comic in Los Angeles, Omapod host Tony Bock used to do a bit about the name. “Just saying ‘Der Viener Schlinger’ on a comedy stage gets a laugh, whether you’re in Nebraska or not,” he told me. “There’s something quintessentially Nebraskan about mustering the courage to solve the problem we faced before the advent of this invention: the inability to ‘schling’ the wieners.”

shevy-java 8 hours ago|||
But there is no german verb called "shlingen".

Does the person who wrote this, speak german?

I assume "schlingen" was meant, but this sounds more like "etwas herunterschlingen" aka eating quickly; that was mentioned via "scarf down, as in food", but to me it sounds more like a description of the object that is held here, like a sling.

But why would that be associated with Vienna, anyway? Nothing like that exists in Vienna really. Also I am not sure about that explanation; to sling makes more sense with hurling something in this context. And the thing looks like a huge slinger. Nobody is opening the mouth to eat everything coming out of that thing right?

xg15 8 hours ago|||
Well, they didn't mean "schlingen" obviously, so I guess they made up a new word :)

Vienna is probably because of Wiener Würstchen, i.e. the hot dog sausages.

4ggr0 8 hours ago||
funnily enough the article uses brat, wiener and frankfurter to describe the sausages. i mean you could argue that wiener and frankfurter are the same, but a brat(wurst) clearly is a different type of dog.
Exoristos 5 hours ago|||
It's different, but evidently it's still schlingable.
icantevenhold 7 hours ago|||
In my experience the difference isnt as noticeable in the US or rather the terms are used more “liberally”
4ggr0 5 hours ago||
+1 for frankfurter and wiener, because those are regional synonyms for basically the same type of sausage. of course it might have some local adjustments, but you know what to expect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_sausage

but brat? a Bratwurst is a very different kind of sausage. thicker, different meat, different taste, different preparation, different taste. frankfurter / wienerli, are commonly boiled in water, bratwurst go on a grill. (Brat = braten = roast).

i got a western-european POV. maybe USians use these words differently. which means they're wrong. or wronger than europeans are when arguing what stuff should be called. doughnut / berliner / krapfen / [insert name you use], just to trigger some people.

croes 5 hours ago||||
In Germany Frankfurter are pork only and Wiener are pork and beef
4ggr0 5 hours ago||
oh well there you go, that's something i wasn't aware of. to me, all of them are 'Wienerli', no matter the type of meat. i even call the vegetarian ones 'Wienerli'.
bigstrat2003 1 hour ago|||
Bratwurst and wieners are indeed different sausages in the US, but funnily enough you would never boil a wiener here, they are always grilled or microwaved in a pinch. Whereas brats are somewhat commonly boiled (often in beer) to cook the inside, then finished on the grill to brown the outside. Though I personally cook them entirely on the grill, as I think the boiling method is somewhat cheating.
croes 5 hours ago|||
For further explanation Wiener means Wiener sausage and is a kind of Frankfurter sausage.

In Austria a Wiener is a different kind of sausage and the German Wiener is called Frankfurter

4ggr0 10 hours ago||
i was fully expecting to see black and white pictures of some german soldiers testing a newly built weapon, was surprised to see a football player carrying a hotdog-shaped cannon.

the broken/fake german did make me suspicious, so i should've seen it coming.

EDIT: imagine a Schwerer Gustav[0] shooting a huge sausage, that's where my brain was going.

EDIT2: according to wiki Gustav can shoot 14 rounds per day, so we could deliver 14 of these sausages[1] daily. why? not sure, combating food scarcity without having to actually go there. Sausage as a Service, directly to your front door.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav [1]https://i0.wp.com/billypenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/v...

ruther4d 7 hours ago||
With a name like J.J. Harder he was destined to schlinger der viener
4ggr0 7 hours ago|
*den
Polizeiposaune 5 hours ago||
One small step along the path to making the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel a reality.
ungreased0675 9 hours ago||
This kind of journalism is refreshing and awesome.
randusername 8 hours ago|
Don't let any news outlet convince you the story of humanity is exclusively one of war, pestilence, exploitation, and ignorance when we also find time to engineer meat cannons and give them silly names
fridder 8 hours ago||
My alma mater. I do love that improving it was an engineering project
bigredhdl 8 hours ago|
Mine also. I've caught a 'Schlinger' launched hot dog. It was extra smushed, but still tasty.
ramesh31 9 hours ago||
>"Since 2018, a Gatling gun version mounted on a prop grill has been shooting out brats at Milwaukee Bucks’ home games at the rate of 24 per 10 seconds; each is enclosed in a foam noodle, which allows condiment packets to accompany the dog."

America.

kakacik 8 hours ago||
Well yeah some stuff across the pond just gets few eyebrows raised and ...but why? questions asked. Lets agree there are some differences on what is perceived cool
mrlonglong 8 hours ago|||
UK's Health and Safety probably would shudder quite a bit at this and say verboten.
robotresearcher 6 hours ago|||
That reserves some crazy points for cheese rolling, which is utterly mental.
Polizeiposaune 6 hours ago|||
Their loss..
mrlonglong 6 hours ago||
But hey, no expensive lawsuits.
TriadDarren 1 hour ago||
This is such a great article.
pezezin 8 hours ago|
Are you really telling me that the Hot Dog Cannon from Tyrian actually exists? o_O
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