Thank you Captain Obvious for your non sequitur post trying to dispute a point I never attempted to make. In the same vein let me state that all of my pairs of socks will amazingly fit either foot.
So you somehow obtained a toy cannon that could be shot with a firecracker without it blowing up in your face. Congratulations! We made bicycle spoke guns when I was a dumb kid and only managed to shoot a tiny lead shot at our cat. However, none of that has anything to do with the O.P.'s cannon post or my comments about it.
What I have been pointing out is that the original poster's cannon appears to be one of tens of thousands of ubiquitous souvenir cannons sold at various historical national park gift/bookstore shops around the country--at least from the mid 20th century until now. These small brass and iron souvenir replicas were purposely designed so they could not practically be converted to be a muzzleloader. They were designed that way with public safety in mind or more correctly for national parks to avoid being sued out of existence by someone foolish enough to try to do it.
That's also why these little souvenir replicas end up in yard sales for a dollar and as overpriced collectibles on eBay. The only difference between the the O.P.'s cannon and the cannons being sold by the shop in Gettysburg that I linked is that the latter are newer versions that have attempted to make the barrels look a little more like actual Civil War cannons such as a Parrott or a Napoleon. The older mass-produced versions were stylized and they simply didn't bother to do this.
Here are two such models in my collection I forgot about since they were stored in a box out in the garage. I don't know how old these are since I've been accumulating stuff like this for over 50 years now. Anyway, I was able to punch out the cross pins used to mount the barrels to the carriage without too much trouble. As anyone can see this results in a good size hole drilled crossways about the middle of the barrel. The bores on both are only about 1.25 inches deep. Regardless, drilling the bore out would be useless since one would still end up with two holes in the cannon wall about midpoint with no way to remount the barrel to the carriage. Once again, since these have been sold by numerous gift shops around or at national battlefields for at least 60 years they are very common. I realize these are not exactly the same as the O.P.'s example but I firmly believe his to be of the same construction/barrel mounting method and thus next to impossible to convert to a usable black powder model. Manufacturing and assembling a barrel in this manner is much simpler and cheaper than trying finish a barrel with real trunnions molded in. The latter method generally requires a lot of time-consuming hand work to grind and polish the barrels around the trunnions and is only reserved for more expensive cannons meant to really be fired.
An easy way to check this without punching out the pin is to use a sharpie to put a mark on the ends of the brass pin. Then simply tilt the barrel up and down. if the mark on the pin doesn't move then it's a pin going through a hole in the barrel and not real trunnions.
I have a house full of small-scale cannons from wooden shell-firing howitzers made by Marx toys to BigBang carbide cannons to depression-era tin toys to a 1/3 scale 1861 Parrott with a 1-inch bore. I've even got a full-scale Coehorn mortar taking up space in my garage. I've studied, built, and collected small cannons for over 50 years now so it's not like I've just fallen off the proverbial turnip truck. My username describes what I did for the first 7 months of my full year (1969) in Vietnam as an artillery officer. This got me interested in historical artillery which turned into building and/or collecting small-scale black powder shooters for over 50 years. That along with visiting every major civil and revolutionary war site in the US from the age of about 8 to around the age of 55. It just takes a little common sense and occasionally some practical experience to know what is safe to use with black powder and what is not.
Here's about two-thirds of my collection. All but two of the floor models are black powder shooters. There are also four or five shooters in the curio
Last but not least, here's a shot of some of my vintage toy cannons including a few different souvenir types. One an all cast iron mortar, and two with real wood carriages but with pot metal barrels. I'm sure some fool blew up a few of those trying to use real gunpowder and that's why these only show up at flea markets and yard sales.
The others range from plastic Marx toys Howitzers from the 1950s that shot wooden or plastic bullets to tin and wood models from the 1930s or 40s which shot either corks or wooden pellets plus a few Big Bang carbide models that are simply noise makers. The pedestal mount or air defense BigBang cannon is from the 1930s or 40s and is a bit rare. The naval cannon with a wooden carriage to the right of it is one of two identical bookends. The little brass plaque on the upright portion says Ft. Sumter, Charleston, S.C. I think my first wife found them in an antique mall in Charleston. Her family had a beach house on the Isle of Palms just across the bay from Charleston so we spent a week or two there every summer for about 10 years. On the other end of the island was Fort Moultrie which along with Ft. Sumter has one of the most complete collections of Civil War sea coast cannons one can imagine.
Cheers
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.
