Shoot, or Don’t Shoot?

A very cool bookend or paperweight. Not a cool assortment of shrapnel.

If you want to shoot a cannon, get a cannon, not a toy or work of art.
 
I have a billiard ball morter I made in high school, used about 2 feet of 1/2" or better think seamless pipe. Its self standing even when fired,Sometime shoot it off on the 4th. Can't say how far the balls go since we never found any and you can't see them in the air very much. It's hard to find good pool balls tho, tried cheap chinese ones but they just come apart.
 
I think I'll stick with fire crackers. I was told that's what my little cannon was made for. Plus there's far less gunpowder that a "pinch of black".I'm not going to worry about projectiles, mine is strictly a noise maker.
 
Surprised no one has suggested boring it out to 1/2”, 5/8” etc.

I mean, the folks who made it intended it to be used for a display. Why screw with it?

Kevin
 
I also have a small CVA naval cannon that really was intended for black powder and .45 lead ball projectiles.It is the one that should have been made for display only. It's got to be tied down or it'll do cartwheels from the recoil. It really is quite worthless.
 
woodnbow said:
A gram or so. And it’s flash powder, completely different stuff.
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It probably is now, flash powder that is. But was it 40 or 50 years ago. Seems like those "little powder sticks" could blow one's fingers off. It seems they could do more damage back then, ordinary flash powder wasn't that destructive. Or am I just remembering the good old days through rose colored glasses?
 
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It's not worth much. There's one just like it on ebay for 25.00. If it blows up it blows up is the way I look at it. I'm not sure what's in firecrackers today but it's not much of anything and they're much weaker than the ones we had in the 70's. The ones in the 70's had powdered aluminum in them. Even the Black Cats had powdered aluminum. It would leave glittery smears on your fingers.
 
An awful lot of "real" barrels - cannons, handguns, blunderbusses, etc. - are just turned brass tubes, exactly like the OP's. Now, my idea of loading up with a patched ball is not real smart - and not perfectly serious - but the idea that a few grains of black and a wad of paper is going to cause it to explode is a bit far fetched.
 
Ha!! So much "angst".

I had a small brass "Civil War" cannon when I was a kid. It had a plunger and shot small plastic "cylinders". Of course I removed the spring and plunger and shoved a perfectly fitting "lady finger" in (fuse first) and fired several. A .177 pellet found its way in and later a "skint down" Black Cat fire cracker was the charge and would send the pellets through a front door panel!!! Pretty cool!!

Mike
 
45 Dragoon said:
Ha!! So much "angst".

I had a small brass "Civil War" cannon when I was a kid. It had a plunger and shot small plastic "cylinders". Of course I removed the spring and plunger and shoved a perfectly fitting "lady finger" in (fuse first) and fired several. A .177 pellet found its way in and later a "skint down" Black Cat fire cracker was the charge and would send the pellets through a front door panel!!! Pretty cool!!

Mike
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Well you are known for pushing the envelope. 😁
 
Show Me said:
What didn't get subjected to blackcats.
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That's funny. It's obvious you don't know me. :rofl: When I was 10 or 11 I picked up all my dud firecrackers and took them apart and saved the powder in a pimento jar. When the jar was full I poked a hole in the jar and stuck the center fuse out of a string of 500 firecrackers in it and put it in a five pound coffee can. I set it off in the empty lot next to the house, lit the fuse and ran like hell. That fuse burned fast. It went off while I was still running and I heard shrapnel whizzing by my ears. It rattled windows for a half a block. After that I stuck to making my own M-80's altho a real M-80 was pretty weak compared to mine. Mine were made out of half a cardboard tube from a coat hanger. The ends were packed with paper towel and filled with black powder. 😁
 
Evidently, nobody here has ever visited the gift shop at any major national civil war or revolutionary war battle field.

That cannon type is like those typically sold in the bookstore/gift shop at various national battlefields purely as decorative souvenirs. They are sold in two or three sizes but all are constructed in the same manner. The barrels are turned on a lathe but generally do not have real molded trunnions. The bore may not extend the entire length of the barrel.

However, the main issue is that the barrel is mounted on the carriage by simply inserting a brass rod through holes drilled at right angles through the middle of the barrel. The rod which appears to be the trunnions is probably peened on each end to keep it in place in the cast iron carriage cheek pieces or maybe it's just a press fit in holes in the iron. Regardless, it would be next to impossible to convert to a shooter. That brass rod will of course obstruct the bore and drilling it out would probably cause the barrel to separate from the carriage, not to mention you would still have two holes left in the sides of the bore. They are purposely made this way to prevent people from making shooters out of them.

Cheers

P.S. Here's a link to a shop located in Gettysburg that has a slew of different sizes and styles for sale. This is a shop located in the town.

Gettysburg Souvenir Shop
 
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hawg said:
None of those are the same. Other than the nameplate this one on ebay is.
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I didn't mean to imply that those at Gettysburg gift shop were exactly the same. I just meant that they are quite common and have the same common construction, i.e., a brass barrel made from a turned brass rod with no trunnions fastened to a cast iron carriage with a smaller brass rod pressed through the cheek pieces and then a hole drilled horizontally through the middle of the barrel. The point is that the barrels all have holes drilled sideways through the middle making them impossible to convert to a functioning muzzle loader. The carriages are also usually stylized to the point that they hardly look authentic.

I visited my first Civil War battlefield in 1957 at age 12. It was Shiloh and the gift shop had dozens of them for sale. Over the next 60 years or so, I have seen them in just about
every souvenir shop we hit that was near or part of a historical site. I'm sure there have been multiple suppliers over the years so the styles differ slightly. I only have tiny one now among my house full of 1/8th to 1/3rd scale shooters. I got it with a lot of small cannons I bought and it's so small it sits on a window sill along with 5 other non-functioning cannons.

I do see them come up on eBay all the time and sometimes the sellers will incorrectly list them with real muzzleloaders. These same people will also list pot metal cannon models and Big Bang carbide cannons because they don't know the difference. Usually if they have a brass nameplate, it will be the name of the Historical site so one can remember where the got it.

Cheers
 
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