Anvil Shooting?

www.mississippitalking.msstate.edu/issue-03/anvil

Has anyone here tried this? It looks like a lot of fun! :)

Wow, I didn't know that was a real tradition. It was featured in the movie "Sweet Home Alabama" (I watched it with my wife, okay?), and I thought it was something Hollywood made up to mock Southerners (no offense intended). Very interesting.

Makes the old 9mm vs .45 argument seem kinda puny! If you only need 10 feet from launch, I could try this in my back yard.

"Firing the anvil" was a for-real tradition, from what I've read it was mostly done on Independence Day or other special occasions, and was firmly established well before the Civil War - I've seen mentions of it as early as 1800. The re-creation I saw done used 2 anvils, the one on the bottom was turned upside down so that more powder could be packed between the two - also I suspect to protect the face of the bottom anvil which is a real bear to repair if you mess it up. It was really a fun event - watching 350 pounds of steel fly through the air ringing loudly is a very novel thing, and the kids liked it even more than than the adults. I won't be firing my own however anytime soon, I had to work too hard to afford the thing to play with it.

Man, I was forced at eye dagger point to see that awful movie. I thought that it was fictional to dig at Southerners as well.

Learn something new every day, especially here on THR.

That ain't cheap. Gotta be about $35 a pop. And two years' worth of powder for me. But look like a real gas!

I've only read a couple of books about Sherman's "Great Picnic" and have never seen anything about anvil shooting.

One book in particular was by a "bummer" who was so unuse to discipline, when he met up with the Army of the Potomac, he, along with other bummers, threw the guards over a bridge just so they could go into town. When the guards came back reinforced and with an officer, they, also reinforced with more bummers, ran the guards & the officer off. Bummers also served as a "vanguard" and could number in the hundreds in an unorganized but cohesive force to seize towns on the march before the regular troops got there. Thievery? Well, Ali Baba & his forty thieves would have been left in loin cloths if the Bummers got to them.

It's real, it's real fun, and it's a real good way to get a crushed skull if you're not careful about it. I also don't think I'd care to try it with one of the all-cast cheapie anvils you get at Harbor Freight. . . . .

When I was back east recently visiting my folks in TN I learned that they do it there every 4th of July:

http://www.museumofappalachia.com/July_4th.htm

Cool, something I can use in my physics class. I'll have my students calculate the initial velocity and the height (neglecting air resistance).

My Hometown volunteer fire department has for many years had a tradition of "shooting the anvils" early every Fourth of July.

We used two anvils, the top one inverted and placed over the bottom one. We used a steel ring about four inches in diameter in which the black powder was placed (a rather large charge). Heated a v-e-r-y long steel rod red hot and placed it through a flash hole into the ring.

Result: a very lusty and satisfying B-O-O-M-! Top anvil didn't move very far.

Firemen loved the tradition. They especially liked to arrive at the home of a very pretentious person about 4:30 or 5 in the morning and start the snob's day off with a real bang.