Cannon Questions

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ltetmhs

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Can any one tell me about this cannon?

My grandfather bought this at an auction about 40 ? years ago. I think he told me that the man he bought it from did shoot it. I didn't have a micrometer handy but near as I can tell it is maybe .68 cal. I could not find a maker, name or any markings on it.

I would really like to take it out and shoot it. Never having fired a cannon before, I was wondering if anyone could give me any tips. Some questions I have are, can I just use a bottle rocket fuse in the touch hole, can I load it with my regular FFF or FF pyrodex, and how much, 68 grains?( I know I hate pyrodex too but its all I can get). And what can I shoot out of it? Would I have to cast my own balls for .68 cal ( which I am not even positive it is) or could I just use a .54 with lot of wadding (that I already cast for) ?

I know I have alot of questions, and thanks in advance for any info.

Cannon001.jpg
 
REal black powder is much more dangerous than the modern "fake" black powder. I would recommend that you not use real black powder. Most gun shops sell cannon fuse by the foot. Don't use a bottle rocket fuse. It's way too short.

why do you need a projectile at all? Just shoot blanks. You can actually use newspaper for the wadding.
 
Oh come on, I got to shoot something. I can't have a cannon and just shoot blanks. Thats like having a gold mine and only taking out the lead.:D
 
Get some regular fuse, sometimes bottle rocket fuse is so fast you may get a blast from the fuse hole. I made a canon thirty years ago, one inch bore, cast my own balls, also used paper towels for wads to shoot blanks. first two towels went in dry, then two wet towels packed tight. Be careful, the paper towel fragments embedded a quarter inch into hard wood. I would use between 100 and 200 grs of FF black powder.
 
You better have a good gunsmith look that over; and maybe one of those auction services that deal in rare old curio. This may not be a 'powder' cannon at all----it may be a carbide noisemaker.
 
"...got to shoot something..." Got a safe place to do that? Not al lranges will let you shoot it. Although you might be able to make some special arrangements at a club.
Know how to aim a cannon? Point and shoot it isn't.
 
Your cannon looks alot like mine. Search for "1/5 scale cannon" in the Black Powder Forum. (I don't know how to link to it.) I load mine with a maximum of 250 gns of FFg, and pack newspaper as a "projectile. Sunray said, "Point and shoot it isn't," and the danger of sending a hard ball of anything downrange without proper sighting tools would be like shooting your pistol blindly over your shoulder at the range, IMHO.
In addition, a friend of mine told me of an incident where a paper-stuffed cannon blew up at a party one day. It was the tenth-or-so shot of the day, and fragments were found in the beds of trucks 50 yards away. They had first passed through the wind shields!
 
cannon

That IS NOT a carbide cannon.carbide cannons are still made at same site in Penn.about $150.I have 4.and the bangsite to shoot them.and that is what they are called BANGSITE CANNONS.:uhoh::rolleyes:
 
I think the recoil and stress on the carriage with those little ones are all out of proportion to a real full-size cannon.

I have one about the same as yours I built from scratch about 40 years ago.

It kicks all the carriage & wheel spoke joints loose when firing lead balls, so I stopped doing that!

It does make a heck of a neat July 4th. toy with black powder & paper wadding though!

If I were you, I would carefully inspect the carriage for strength before even attempting to shoot lead balls.
Those old ones like yours are too neat & possibly valuable to bust them up.

rcmodel
 
Got to tell a cannon story. Back in 67 when I was 17, two friends and I decided to build our own cannon. So we took a 1 inch water pipe 3 feet long and put it in inside a 3 inch water pipe and filled up the space with molten metal called babbit. On the ranch my dad used to make bearings for the steam engine and stationary harvester out of this metal. We drilled a hole for the fuse and put it on a couple of pulley wheels off of a 1935 CASE combine mounted on a carriage. We loaded it up with God only knows how much black powder and ball bearings and shot this thing off towards a summer-fallow field to see where in the hell we were hitting. After a few dozen shots this got boring so we took it up to the main street of Reubens in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday and touched this thing off with nothing but BP and wadding. We broke the windows out of the Seed House and the Wayside Inn from the concussion and knocked the acting mayor out of his chair during a counsel meeting which they only had once a year. He come out in the street with his glasses ascue and his hat on backwards and asked us "what in the name of hell we thought we were doing? He than said "you boys have whay too much free time on your hands, so go out and buck some hay for the rest of the day and please stay out of town till Sunday and when you come to church I will talk to your parents about the windows. Now git! A true story that will never be forgotten!
 
Your cannon looks a great deal like mine in size and the carriage. The wheels look different being that they are not flat like a wagon wheel on the outside but round like a regular tire. Is the wood that the cannon is mounted to solid or are there 3 parts to it not including the wooden axle?

On top of my cannon it says made in Spain as well as "Black Powder Only" but I've yet to find out the who actually made/sold these. At first I thought mine may be a 60 caliber but turns out it is a rifled .58 cal. . I've shot mine only a few times and have yet to get a good report when firing it. Basically just a "poof" and that's about all but I haven't used more than 60 grains of pyrodex FF. All blanks shot so far, no lead. Someone recommended using aluminum foil to make the powder charge which I tried and it was a mistake. The foil ended up clogging the breach end of the cannon to where you could not get the load to shoot. That same night I was using the cannon fuse that has been recommended here and it was a tight fit for the touch hole. It did work until the breach got plugged but I have used the main long fuse which you find that holds a pack of fire crackers together. It can be cut to certain lengths too but like mentioned it is fast.

Do you have any more close pictures of your cannon/carriage? Is that brass? Really like your cannon. Nice looking piece.

This is the thread on my cannon when I first asked about it, with pic's.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=297402

This one is made of steel and the pic's are before I sandblasted the cannon and removed the dirt from the carriage. It turned out to be grey, not tan and the barrel itself is now black. Dixie Gunworks has one exactly like this only in a differant scale under mountain howitzer w/o carriage.
 

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we used to shoot a lot of cannons. Some smaller than your's some with 1.5" bores and the biggest, a shop made mortar that would chamber a beer can. It might be a good idea to start out with something less than 68grain/vol equivalent as the recoil woudl some times send our cannons end over end.
the inch and quarter one we had was made of cold rollled steel tubing. we shot a lot of things out of that but the most interesting things were giant jawbreakers. If you sucked on one for twenty minutes, it reached the proper bore size. We figured it to be a frangible projectile and were surprised when the things went through 2x6's at 25 yards and blew huge exit holes.
 
YouTube has a great deal of video's showing people firing various cannon's. Some links I've picked up from here but they are easy to locate there. Pretty cool to watch and hear a bowling ball being fired off and just how far it can go.
 
To make a loud report, the wadding needs to be packed in really tight to seal some of the expanding gases in the bore.
A lightweight projectile wouldn't create as much pressure as a lead ball. There's 5/8" wood or plastic balls that can be patched to shoot to a lesser distance than lead balls. And if an approximately .62 caliber ball were combined with a .030 patch or so, hopefully it would seal the bore effectively enough to create a loud report.
Though the ease of loading would depend on the smoothness of the bore and any of these alternative balls might not be as uniform as those made from swaged lead.
It might help to also pack some kind of newspaper/waxboard over powder wadding under the patched ball too, especially if the patched ball fits too loosely in the breech. Maybe the ball wouldn't even need to be patched if the wadding were packed tight enough. Just ram the bare ball down on top of the wadding for size to try it out. It probably wouldn't hurt whatever short range accuracy potential there is very much anyway, especially since those lightweight balls won't travel very far compared to lead.

Wood balls:
http://www.howee.com/shop/index.php?action=category&id=14&subid=22

Acrylic balls:
http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/pr...SPlastic&category_name=21316&product_id=13307
 
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I never knew about the wood or plastic balls. That might be a good place to start. Jawbreakers sound really fun too!


Thanks for all the responses.
 
Got to tell a cannon story. Back in 67 when I was 17, two friends and I decided to build our own cannon. So we took a 1 inch water pipe 3 feet long and put it in inside a 3 inch water pipe and filled up the space with molten metal called babbit. On the ranch my dad used to make bearings for the steam engine and stationary harvester out of this metal. We drilled a hole for the fuse and put it on a couple of pulley wheels off of a 1935 CASE combine mounted on a carriage. We loaded it up with God only knows how much black powder and ball bearings and shot this thing off towards a summer-fallow field to see where in the hell we were hitting. After a few dozen shots this got boring so we took it up to the main street of Reubens in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday and touched this thing off with nothing but BP and wadding. We broke the windows out of the Seed House and the Wayside Inn from the concussion and knocked the acting mayor out of his chair during a counsel meeting which they only had once a year. He come out in the street with his glasses ascue and his hat on backwards and asked us "what in the name of hell we thought we were doing? He than said "you boys have whay too much free time on your hands, so go out and buck some hay for the rest of the day and please stay out of town till Sunday and when you come to church I will talk to your parents about the windows. Now git! A true story that will never be forgotten!
Click to expand...


oh man that was funny good story
 
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