HAMMONTON — Rob Butkowski wanted to be photographed wearing his American flag shirt because “in America you can build anything you want.”
Dressed in red, white and blue with a .45-caliber handgun in a holster on his hip and his dog, Ranger, by his side, Butkowski then graciously showed off his “hail cannon” on a cloudy afternoon earlier this week.
The contraption has created shock and awe in this and surrounding towns and made the 34-year-old, lifelong Hammonton resident a mini celebrity.
A photo of him and his cannon appeared on the front page of the New York Post last week. The syndicated television show “Inside Edition” aired a segment on him this week.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Butkowski said. “I’ve always liked to shoot. I’ve been shooting since I was 4 years old. As long as it’s safe, it’s fun.”
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Butkowski’s cone-shaped cannon blasts a shock wave into the sky that travels at the speed of sound and breaks apart clouds, preventing them from forming hail stones.
The noise from the 16-foot-long cannon also scares away birds that sometimes damage the 300 grape vines Butkowski grows on his 5-acre property on the outskirts of town.
Best of all, the cannon is equipped with a Bluetooth speaker, so in addition to shock waves it can also blast Butkowski’s favorite AC/DC songs.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he said.
Butkowski is a licensed firearms dealer and a member of Laborers Local 172. He’s long had a fascination with rockets and other inventions. He began to experiment with building a hail cannon when COVID-19 first struck and he saw a YouTube video of it.
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“I always like to make new things. Things I haven’t seen before,” he said. “I came across something and said, ‘That’s pretty neat.’ There was no plan. I just based it off a picture and started building it.”
Butkowski got off to a shaky start. One of his earlier models blew up in his driveway.
An Austrian wine grower supposedly invented the first hail cannon in 1896.
“It vibrates the air,” Butkowski said, “if it’s going to hail, the rain doesn’t freeze.”
Butkowski’s cannon mixes acetylene and oxygen in a combustion chamber to create the explosion. A grayish ring of air is propelled from the cannon at a 15-degree angle. The explosion creates a vortex ring that can travel 30,000 feet and be 1.5 miles wide. Butkowski made the cone of the cannon from scrap metal that was sitting behind one of his friend’s homes.
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He first fired it using a remote trigger about two months ago.
“It was like, ‘Oh my God,’” he said with a laugh. “I ran and put it in the garage because I thought the cops were going to come.”
Butkowski fired it off a couple of times after that. Things got a little crazy. Residents from Hammonton and Mullica townships called 911, wondering what the explosions were. Some said the blasts shook the foundations of their homes. Local media began airing reports about the mysterious blasts.
“My buddy said, ‘Dude, this you?’” Butkowski said.
He quickly called local police departments to tell them what the cannon was. He welcomed police to come check out the cannon for themselves. Hammonton police Chief Kevin Friel told the New York Post the machine was the source of the noise and it was legal.
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“I was like, ‘It’s not a firearm. It doesn’t shoot anything out of it,’” he said.
As a concession to his neighbors, Butkowski isn’t sure how much he will fire it off anymore.
“I’m not going to shoot it as much,” he said. “If it hails, yeah, but it’s not an everyday thing. I’ve never shot it past 8 o’clock. I respect the neighbors.”
He would love to sell the cannon or get into the business of making more legitimate-looking hail cannons for farmers out west to use. He mused about taking his cannon and showing it off at local fairs.
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And he’s already thinking of his next adventure.
“Everybody likes things that are loud,” he said.
Butkowski quickly added a caveat.
“Some people,” he said with a smile and shake of his head.
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