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Cannons any one?

55fairlane

After looking thru the scrap box I stumbled across a piece of 1 inch D.O.M. with a 3/8 hole , and i thought , hhhmmmmmm, wonder what this could be good for?
Then I realized I have never made a black powder cannon! Out to the lathe I went and after about 45 minutes I had the barrel turned and polished up........more pictures to come





Any of you made a fun project? Please show pics of your projects!
 
Id like to have a cannon. 3 or 4 inch bore... maybe just tennis ball size... big boom. Not sure where to get a good one and not junk. One that can be "aimed" somewhat... has settings...
 
I've got about 25 lbs of black that I'll never use in my smoke pole. Been thinking about a cannon to have some fun with. Rifled barrel would be great. I'm thinking something in the order of 2" balls at a thousand yards. jd
 
Josh has it right!!! I had a custom made spud gun and discovered that the barrel was just right for a cloth patched golf ball. Shooting it with golf balls was like going to Bart's bullets from the potatoes I had been shooting. They flew sooooo good. I could dent the tail gate of a dump truck with one if I used hair spray and a blast of oxygen from the cutting torches. As you might well suspect soon I had an over pressure. The left side of my body from neck to almost waist was one solid burse. I was black and blue for weeks. Golf balls are super round, precise and dense, they fly good.
 
In college a buddy of mine and I were both TAs, he was a machining major and I was in diesel tech. We had access to the shops after hours and made several very nice cannons. On was made from some special CRES. A 1.15 inch bore with a 3/4 " wall. We had a lot of fun with it until we ran out of FF black powder and only had a can of FFFF left. For those not familiar with black powder, that is flash powder.
Well we packed half a can in her, a large wad of cloth, a 1.25 dia x 3 inch long hunk of steel and a wad on top of that. Put a 3 foot fuse on it and took it up to the floor of a rock quarry. Well we lit it and ran like hell. We found a few fragments of the barrel that looked like a banana peel and a three foot round hole in the quarry rock floor.
Needless to say, that was the end of our cannon making. Not because we blew it up but we graduated and went our ways and to more populated areas.
 
Had a neighbor that built a cannon and used metal frozen lemonade cans filled with cement for rounds. Not sure what he used for powder but it would shoot those cans about 500 yards out into the bay. And loud?:eek::eek::cool::cool:

When I first met him, he warned me that he WAS NOT beating his wife. He had a bunch of Peacocks that ran loose on his property. You could hear them at all hours, HAALP, HAALP. Good thing he warned me ahead of time.:confused:;)
 
Dusty Stevens said:
I have a mini cannon made to shoot .177 pellets with cap gun cap innards for fuel. Its fun to shoot balloons etc
Click to expand...
I made a steel shell with a 22 liner about 3" in total length that I use in 30-06 guns that shoots 22 pellets using shotgun primers . Has enough accuracy and power to take squirrels or close turkey head shots .
Never thought about making a cannon for 177 or 22 pellet ammo .
 
jds holler said:
I've got about 25 lbs of black that I'll never use in my smoke pole. Been thinking about a cannon to have some fun with. Rifled barrel would be great. I'm thinking something in the order of 2" balls at a thousand yards. jd
Click to expand...
What about those bowling ball cannons , they use military grade oxygen welding tanks . I've been saving a small 14"X 5" od solid steel billet for a 50 BMG , built one already, now over the 50 kick so a cannon may be in the works .
 
My oldest son used to go with a gal who's father had a bowling ball canon made from a welding tank. He used to shoot it across the bay from his yard, and had a video of it, with the ball skipping across the water. Pretty impressive.
 
The nitrogen bottle bowling ball cannons will launch a 16lb ball over 1000yds. I think the guy i knew that had one used 2lbs of black powder he made himself. It was some awesome firepower
 
Back in high school machine shop we made a cannon, what I called a mortor. It was 3 inch OD by 18 inches long, with a hole in it ti fit a flare. It was welded to a piece of angle iron that was welded in the middle of a piece H beam. We would use 2 shotgun shells full of FFFg and light the flare and drop it in there and light the fuse and run and it would shoot it lit out of sight. The mortor would flip over from the recoil. It was a blast.
Tarey
 
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