Cannons.

Col4570 said:

4v50Gary,Some time ago a bloke knowing my interest in BP shooting phoned me to say he had these and did I know anyone who might buy them.apparently his late Father owned them and they had been on the Fireplace.His mother was continuously stubbing her Toes on them so there was an urgent need to get them out of the way.I went to look ,liked them and bought them.I am of the opinion that they are Signal Cannon.I should imagine that they would make quite a healthy BANG if set off.The Carriages are of Oak the Axles and Wheels are Cast Steel all in all very heavy and not the sort of things to tuck under the Arm.
As for their origins I suspect the Barrels and undercarriage are older than the Oak.

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I had thought that perhaps they were signal cannon. An American pawn shop tv show had one that the local historian said that ships would use them to signal their arrival.

Col4570, if we were on the same continent I would love to visit and learn from you. I enjoy all your posts.

Here's my 1.75" Swivel Gun

It's the only way to play golf.

but you must bring the cart, it weighs 47 pounds without the tree stump.

Desidog,

That looks like lots of fun. Just about the size I need to start with. How powder do you load? Do you shoot any projectiles of just make noise?

The guy that runs the battery in Archer Florida I meantioned elsewhere was going into the carriage business at one point. He bought the old Post office building next to his house and had some stuff in there. He had a display during one of the local festivals in the building. Because of the BP storage issues he seems to be doing more WWII re enacting now and keeps a repro German Armored car in the back yard.

If folks are serious about the possibility of buying a carrage or parts maybe I can be convinced to drop by his place and see if he would like contacts.

-kBob

This is not a reproduction. 3 inch rifle in Archer FL in 2006.

It is in the front yard of the guy's house in this shot and the white stucco building in the back ground is the old post office.

Home owner/ battery commander is barely visable in kepi in the rear left of the crew.

At the time they had a repro parrot and a scaled down parrot a 12 lb mountain howitzer on a 6 pounder carriage and a six pounder IIRC.

-kBob

Inside the shop is the 12 pound Mountain howitzer and the 1/3 scale model of the Parrot.

Just thought you guys might like to see these.

-kBob

I meantioned the Olustte battle re enactment elsewhere and the night firing of a half dozen or more guns here is a shot of that.

-kBob

Different year and a daylight shot of the artillery park.

and that wraps it up.

-kBob

RandyRay41,

That pic above was a Titleist #3, IIRC, shot with 480 grains of Pyrodex RS, some corrugated cardboard discs cut to size with a compass and scissors, for use as wadding, and a torn t-shirt patch wrapped around the golf ball. We were using some cannon fuse so that no one's hand would be around the touch-hole, but you could also use some priming powder and slow-match.

On a couple occasions we've also used 4-5" sections of PVC filled with concrete, for a wadcutter effect. The pressure gets pretty high with heavy projectiles. I prefer the golf ball for ease of procurement...if you tell your buddies you're breaking out the cannon, they WILL bring you golfballs....call it the price of admission.

My particular cannon does not have an undersized chamber drilled behind where the ball is seated. This means that in order to get an even powder-burn in the chamber, you need to have 1.75"diameter x 3.14"for area x____amount of height of propellant...making a cylindrically shaped charge to propel your projectile in a consistent manor so that you can achieve a degree of consistency and accuracy...or at least as much as possible with a smooth bore.

480gr gets you a big boom....i like to hear echo....then silence.....then cautious laughter...then uproarious laughter. (works every time!)

That powder load, as you can tell from a look at the picture, doesn't get entirely burned up in the barrel, where the magic happens as far as the golf ball is concerned...but a few, say 8-12, extra feet of muzzle flash and ensuing smoke cloud is always a crowd pleaser.

The coolest cannon ive seen is that hand cannon chumlee fired on pawn stars.

It looked like a small caliber cannon some one mounted it to a wood handle. He shot at a coffee cub at like 15 yards or something.

I just thought it looked really cool

Col4570,

As far as I know the Archer group only fires blanks. There did used to be a national organization for and competition for firing solid shot. When I lived in Neu Ulm, Germany, the club I belonged to had a number of folks that liked to fire little table top scale model cannon with solid shot. They were restricted by the club to Wednesday nights because of the fuss and fumes.

I was a Cannon Battery Field Artillery Officer in the US Army and got interested in how folks used to do it for a bit.

-kBob

I've collected cannons for years, got a bunch of the little CVA .50 cal ones. The biggest I have is a Lyle gun that was used as a line throwing gun for ships in distress. Add in the mortars and there's quite a few altogether. If you look at the muzzle of your cannon you should be able to tell if it's sleeved with a steel liner which makes it one of the safer ones to shoot. The smoke and noise is what it's all about.