He didn't build a railgun
Gauss cannon equals coilgun, but neither of those is remotely like a railgun. They are quite different. See above. They all sound all sci-fi but they're not really, it's simple tech.

The holy grail for the military is to make a railgun that's reliable enough to use again and again. The rails melt because of the current and friction from the projectile. The military has had prototypes for years that are ridiculously powerful but liquify after a couple of shots. They are easy to make at home as well (at lower powers obviously), probably easier than a Gauss gun.

That reliability problem is not an issue with a Gauss gun. The difficulty with a Gauss gun is making it powerful enough to bring the pain, something that involves supercooled magnets and liquid nitrogen. That isn't really battlefield-friendly technology. Hence why all the research at the moment is directed at railguns. Which isn't what the OP built.
( Scrumper, Wed 18 Feb 2009, 13:07, Reply)