[Kevin Sevcik]

Richard,

A coil gun is a kind of high-velocity, low usefulness gun. You have an inductor, you something on the order of a Farad of charged capacitance through it, and you get a massive magnetic pulse to hurl something out of it. Usually magnetic, for some reason, but I imagine a brass or copper pellet would be likely to work better unless you could manage to instantly kill the magnetic field before it starts slowing down your iron pellet on the exit. Eddy currents are always repulsive, after all, though I'm admittedly unsure a pellet would be large enough to develop sufficient current.