Shot My Cannon

[ThomasT]

I bought a cannon from my late friends daughter. I have had this for about 4 years and never shot it. It is what I would call a naval style with small solid wheels on the carraige. It has a 24" barrel with a 2" bore.

Everyone was shooting fireworks for the 4th so a friend called and said bring your cannon over. It seemed like a good time to fire it. I put about a 1/4 pound of powder in it and a wad of newspaper. Lit the fuse and moved off. I cannot describe the BOOM and the fireball it made but I outclassed all the other fireworks around me. We shot it twice more and the last shot I put about a third of a pound of powder in it. When it went off the neighbors car alarm went off. The car was at least a hundred yards away.

Every time I fired the cannon it rolled backwarks through the grass. The third shot propelled it 20 feet to the rear. If you get a chance to own or shoot a cannon don't pass up the chance.

 

[ThomasT]

I hope this is a photo of my cannon. It worked! The juice can is a 6oz V-8 can and is a perfect fit in the bore. I need to get busy and fill a few with cement and see how they shoot.

 

[Al LaVodka]

IMO you're lucky you're not injured or worse. What makes you think a tube like that will handle more than 5 ozs. of wadded BP? I urge you not to do that again until you do some serious homework maybe including a magnaflux! Christ, my Pedersoli muskets have almost as thick a barrel! The big gun here in the pic below doesn't even get what you loaded that with. Didn't the recoil of a projectileless firing even wake you up!? Homemade POS signal cannon.

Honestly, you just ate up three of your nine lives and those of your friends and their families IMO. FYI, the mortar in the foreground is 2.75" (soda can size) bore too with a 6" wide steel-lined bronze tube and uses 300 grains of modern Black Powder and that's in a reduced chamber...

Al

 

[esheato]

I've seen and fired cannons similar to yours...never that much propellant though. LOL...definitely a bit much.

 

[ThomasT]

The barrel is steel and not cast iron. It has a threaded breech plug also. Plus the man who built it shot it all all the rondevous he went to. He shot horse apples and wood dowel rods he turned in his brothers cabinet shop. It has has several pounds of powder ran through it already. The man who built it added the eye bolt on the front because it would run away when he shot it. Maybe I should name it "Toyota".

Thanks for your concern though.

 

[Al LaVodka]

Dude, it is a pipe bomb!
Al

 

[Rail Driver]

It might be a pipe bomb when loaded with that much powder AND a projectile, but without the projectile tightly jammed into the barrel there's nothing to cause the pressure to spike and explode the barrel. Think about the physics, people. If he were using 1.95" cannonballs with 1/3 lb of powder I wouldn't want to be within 200 yds, but with nothing more than a wad of newspaper, I'd want to light the fuze.

DEFINITELY take the advice offered, however, when you decide to fire the cannon with a projectile. There should be load data for your cannon on the internet somewhere, google will find it for you if you look hard enough.

 

[ThomasT]

Thanks Fuzzy. And I beleive you are correct. I didn't use that much wadding. Plus we stood behing the truck and watched the cannon go off. I may and may not shoot a projectile. I already regret the use of so much powder for just three shots. I like a little more mileage from a can of powder. Thats why I have a new 36 and a new 32 rilfe.

 

[ThomasT]

Dude, it is a pipe bomb!
Al

No, those are put in a ditch and have a MUCH longer fuse. LOL.

 

[ThomasT]

Okay just for grins I measured just how much powder I did put in my cannon. I used a scoop that comes with powdered Gatoraid since I have drawer full of these things. As close as I can tell it will hold around 840grs of 2F powder.

Now I found this site that says a max is 875grs for a 2" bore. I should be fine. http://www.cannon-mania.com/load.htm Of coarse I will reduce the load if and when I shoot a projectile.

 

[Floppy_D]

Sounds like a hoot! I'm glad you found some data to use. I concur that you're okay without a projectile, and that you dug up info before filling those cans with cement. Sounds like a heck of a 4th!

 

[fireside44]

Plastic grocery bags make for superior wadding that won't start the woods or your lawn on fire.

 

[ThomasT]

Plastic grocery bags make for superior wadding that won't start the woods or your lawn on fire.

They don't melt in the barrel? I did have a small fire by the way. It went out before I could get to it. It has rained here quite a bit. When shooting the cannon we put it on a piece of plywood because the field had standing water all over it. Thats probably why it rolled so far. It got a good run before hitting the grass. It rolls like its on bearings anyway.

 

[fireside44]

They don't melt in the barrel?

I suppose they do a little bit, but they don't burn like paper and there is no noticeable mess outside of BP residues. You can set the woods on fire with a handful of .50 cal balls in front of paper. Just like starting a fire with the wall street journal...lol

Thats probably why it rolled so far. It got a good run before hitting the grass. It rolls like its on bearings anyway.

Needs to roll a little to soak up the recoil, otherwise they flip over.

 

[ThomasT]

Hey Fireside it did flip over on shot number 2. It went off the plywood and stuck in the mud and flipped on its back. The third shot I moved over to a drier piece of ground and it rolled like crazy.

The guy that built it said one of the first times he shot it it rolled back and hit one of the galvanized water cans at the rondevous. It dented the can pretty badly. Thats why it has an eye bolt on the front of it now.

Just in case anyone might know him he was Mike Grammer. He belonged to the Aurora Tx muzzle loading club. he was a shooting buddy, we flew model airplanes together and just enjoyed each others company. There is not a week goes by that I don't think of him. He has been gone 7 years almost to the day. He was a real friend, like the brother I never had.

 

[fireside44]

Hey Fireside it did flip over on shot number 2. It went off the plywood and stuck in the mud and flipped on its back.

The rear of the carriage would tend to slide back until it hooked up and dug into the earth and then the cannon would flip over unless we downloaded it. I don't think most of these scale cannons have the weight or size to deal with the power they are capable of producing. All but a few of the youtube vids are more like "pop" instead of "boom".

I always did enjoy reducing an old refrigerator into swiss cheese at 100 yards with a couple .50 caliber shot blasts from that thing. Wouldn't want a kid to get locked in there and not be able to get out...lol

 

[ThomasT]

I have been reading the civil war series time/life books and the cannon used then were huge. Multi thousands of pounds. Even then some of them ruptured. Its is impressive the amounts of powder they went through.

One thing I can't seem to find info on is how they made a fused cannon ball and how they ajusted the fuse to explode a certain distance down range.

The books said that even as effective as the cannon was 90% of all civil war deaths were from the minnie ball wounds. I am just finishing up the battle of Gettysburg. They killed 50,000 men in 3 days. Now what would the american public do if just 1/10th of that amount of soldiers were killed in 3 days in Iraq? They would go berzerk is what.

 

[junkman_01]

Your KIA figures for the battle of Gettysburg are WAY out of line.

Here are the real figures....

Casualties and losses

USA
23,055
(3,155 killed
14,531 wounded
5,369 captured/missing)
CSA
23,231
(4,708 killed
12,693 wounded
5,830 captured/missing

Total KIA 7863

 

[Guncollector1982]

one of my friends uses golf balls in his cannon for projectiles not sure what his bore diameter is though. The cannon duel at gettysburg would have been scary as hell regardless of there effectiveness overall in the casualty numbers.

 

[Al LaVodka]

Knowing how quickly a fuse burned one would cut the fuse to the appropriate length and knock it into the shell. The blast from the propellant charge lights the fuse. It would burn into the shell ultimately to the fragmentation charge and ignite that. Hopefully for an airburst over Rebels. I say that because the Confederate fuses were really bad and they couldn't really do this. There were other innovative types of fuses...

Now, there are 7,000 grains per pound -- how'd you get from a third of a pound to 840 grs.? You also should be using 1f powder or maybe Scheutzen Reenactor. You're REALLY scary.

Al

 

[ThomasT]

Your KIA figures for the battle of Gettysburg are WAY out of line.

Maybe it was total casualties. My mistake. Still a lot of killed, injured and missing. I only missed it by 39,000.

The guy I was shooting with wants a cannon that will take golf balls. When you shoot it I don't know if you yell "Fire In The Hole" or "Fore!!!"

 

[Acorn Mush]

Ratshooter, the concrete-filled cans won't give you any kind of accuracy if that is what you're after. They will tumble end-over-end. Mortar shooters out here use them quite a lot. I've seen many of them flung into the upper reaches of the lower atmosphere and nary a one hasn't tumbled - even with streamers attached.

Perhaps you can mold some balls out of plaster of paris or something that will fly a bit straighter. One more point on safety. From your picture, the barrel walls seem to be pretty thin. Information I have read says that for safety, the barrel wall thickness should equal the bore diameter, eg. a 2" bore should have 2" of metal between the bore and you. If you decide to shoot projectiles, please think about severely reducing your charges. We don't want any of our guys, or anybody at all, becoming a grim statistic.

I'm happy you had a barricade between you and the cannon when you set it off.

 

[Bluehawk]

I've read where wall thickness should be a minimum 1/2 the bore diameter.

 

[ThomasT]

Al I did find some info on the cannon fuses and how they worked. I just guessed on the weight of the powder because the scoop I used looked like a LOT of powder.

Acorn I wasn't looking for accuracy at long range. And I was going to shorten the cans so they were 2" tall so they would match the width of the bore. Also the walls are 1/2" thick. I can't remember if this is steam pipe or cold rolled seemless steel for the barrel. The guy who had it built is long dead.

As for the fuses I knew it had to be something likr that. In the movie "The Alamo" when the shell lands in the Alamo the actor who plays Travis flicks a wooden plug with a fuse in it out of the cannon ball. Also there is a scene in "Last Of The Mohicans" where they drop a motar shell down the bore and the fuse is already lit. I guess if the motar misfired things could get interesting real quick if you couldn't get the fuse put out.

 

[ClemBert]

Kewl, congrats and a late happy 4th to ya! Keep it safe.