Cannon Shoot, 9 July

[davec2]

On the 4th of July, I hauled out the cannon to fire off a few blank rounds on the front lawn for the neighbors. 





My daughters had been after me for some time to go and shoot the gun for real as they both had fond childhood memories of being picked up at their grade school by me in a 1989 Jeep Cherokee towing a trailer with three quarters of a ton of cannon on it.  The last time we had fired the big gun with cannon balls was in 1993.  She was 8 and her sister was 4 (they are both now in their 20’s).

I built the gun in 1970 when I was a junior in high school.  For two years I fired it at every football game.  The intent was to fire it every time we made a touchdown.  However, we didn’t have a very good team at the small private high school I attended, so I would fire the gun any time any body got a touchdown!  Everybody enjoyed it. 

As a side note, imagine how the world has changed in the last 40 years.  I used to show up at my high school football games towing a home made trailer carrying a full size cannon and a caisson with 50 pounds of black powder.  And no one even thought about calling the bomb squad.

At any rate, it took a lot more effort to get ready for a live fire event than I remembered.  Refurbish the gun, refurbish the gun trailer, prepare powder charges, cast cannon balls, build a target, etc., etc., and then con a bunch of my friends to help move and serve the gun.

Powder charges:



Cast Cannon balls:





Get the gun to the range and set it up:



Build and set up a target:



Teaching a neighbor lad how to worm and swab the gun:



My daughter and I discussing the fine art of aiming an artillery piece:





Friends and neighbors get a chance to fire a cannon:





Out of the first 12 rounds fired at a 250 yard target (48 inch black) 8 hit the target and four were near misses (one hit was on a bounce from a shot that was short).  The cast ball has way too much windage and I am modifying the ball mold to get a much better fit.  We should be able to keep all the rounds in a 4 foot bull at this range.





After the close range shooting, we were picking out targets at 600 yards and beyond on the range and did fairly well.  All in all, a very fun day.  It took four hours but we fired 32 round shot and a heck of a lot of black powder.

[Canute Rex]

Good shooting for a smoothbore, especially with windage.

You might try looking around online for surplus or off spec ball bearings and tumbling mixer balls. I have seen them for sale now and again in a variety of diameters. You'd get a lot higher velocity with a steel/iron ball.

So what thickness of patch do you use, and what kind of lube? 

[davec2]

Canute,

These balls are not lead but cast zinc, so they are very close to the density of iron.  (Cast zinc = 440 lbs / cubic foot and cast iron = 450 bs / cubic foot).  So the velocity is actually a little faster than an iron ball.  I have not been able to find commercially produced iron or steel ball of the right size so far.

No patch.  No lube.  Just powder and round shot.

[mjm46@bellsouth.net]

Would accuracy improve with a patch?
What size charge do you use?
Do you have to use a new ball for each shot, can you reuse a ball?

Back in the bicentennial I knew a gent who had a cannon and I recall he told me that he used cement filled juice cans for ammo. Is something like that an option?

Cannons look like sooooo much fun!!

[alyce-james]

Dave; Looks to be great fun shooting a cannon in your front yard. Shooting a cannon with blank loads here in south Texas would not have a positive outcome. In the 1980's while in Iowa we built a working model of a 50 caliber Gatling gun and had a great time at reenactments. Thanks for sharing the day with us. Jim & Alyce.

[zimmerstutzen]

I have four or five small cannons aqnd dream of getting a full size.  I am so envious!  My largest has a 1.25 inch 34 inch bronze tube.

[R.W.D.]

Very neat!  Thanks for the photos.

[LURCHWV@BJS]

I am soooooooo jealous [/coloI want a cannon very badly .  Thanx for sharing


Rich r]

[Daryl]

That is a beautiful gun, Dave. Well done. What powder charge? 

Taylor had a 3" gun back in the 70's and 80's we used to shoot a lot, using iron balls from a precious metal ball mill machine.  The casting band (mould lines) were ground off to make a round ball of slightly under 3" diameter.  The accuracy was quite amazing.  At 300yards, on the granite face of the mountain, they'd produce about a 12 foot diameter rock dust explosion when they hit. We shot up to 1/2 pound, but usually about 1/4 pound of 1f or cannon powder.

Dog food or veggie cans filled with concrete also make good projectiles. The tumbling cans are quite accurate and follow very straight lines of flight.

Cannon are loads of fun - not to be trifled with, but tremendously fun & expensive to shoot when powder is $20.00 per pound.

[roamer]

davec2 ,first beautiful job.May I inquire where I could obtain zinc to melt to balls. I have a 2.25 dia cannon have been using lead balls ,recoil is ridiciculous

[davec2]

Micah,

Can't really use a patch with a cannon.  If it is too loose, it doesn't do any good and if it's too tight and you get a ball stuck half way down the bore with a half pound of powder behind it, it's a real pain to try to unload.  As for re-using the ball, if you can find them, and they haven't hit a rock, they can be re-used right away.  Even if they are damaged, the zinc can be re-cast into new round shot.  However, it was too much trouble to try and chase them, so I have not bothered reclaiming them.  Juice cans and such can be filled with concrete and used as inexpensive projectiles.  I don't do it, but i know others who have.

Alyce-James,

Shooting here in the front yard has the potential for problems as well.  I always invite all the neighbors, as well as a few local cops, to come shoot the cannon.  No problems for the last 40 years or so.

Daryl,

We were shooting 6 oz charges of lift powder..much coarser than cannon grade.  Here are a couple of photos:

Goex cannon grade:



Lift powder:



I was back east visiting Ray Rapine a while back and he had a cannon for sale that he had won a smooth bore competition with.  I can't recall the range, but he had put several successive 2.5 inch balls in a 24 inch bull at more than a couple of hundred yards.  I asked him how he managed that.  He said he had made an accurate ball mold for a ball that had less than .005 inches of windage (rather than the 1/8 inch recommended and that I was shooting with in these photos).  With a clean straight bore and a well fitting ball, these guns are capable of much better accuracy than one would suspect.  I am re-working my ball mold now to get that kind of windage for the next go around.

Roamer,

You can have zinc shipped from Roto Metals (www.rotometals.com) for about $2.30 a pound.  If you have a scrap yard near by, you may find junk die cast parts for a lot less and use them to cast ball.

[roamer]

Thankyou .MY Dad made me my cannon 40 yrs ago and I have nver been able to locate zinc again thanks

[Daryl]

Hatchet jack's cannon looks similar to your's Dave - only the outside of it is fiberglass formed around a 1 1/2" bore tube.(about a 1 pounder)

We're only shooting up to about 2oz. per shot and that works very well. By appearances, were're getting well over 1,000fps. We shoot a 1.4" WW ball, with a denim patch and achieve quite good accuracy. The gun has a sighting system that is used to align the gun, then is removed for the shot, as the front sight is a bearing mounted centering blade that fits the muzzle. The rear aperture sight fits on a pin protruding from the caskabell. (sp?)

The 'club's cannon looks almost identical, but is a 3" field piece.  It is usually fed tin cans filled with contrete.

[Mike R]

Nice cannon.  Have fun but be careful.  I am an artilleryman  [4th Loiuisiana Artillery, 1st Sgt (gunner)].  I just have to comment that the young man worming [or swabbing] the barrel is in a dangerous position. He should be along side and as far behind the muzzle as possible--for the same reason you don't have your face over the rifle barrel when swabbing or loading.  Hopefully when loading you are behind the muzzle and using only one [open] hand.  Even blank loads can kill or maim. 

Our unit normally shoots blank loads at Civil War reenactments or memorials, however we have fired live loads, both solid and grapeshot.  For a few years we fired the cannon [we have a Parrot, a Napolean and a Mt Howitzer] at LaTech Univ football games--after the home team scored.  Tends to set off car alarms all around!  Another group here has a rifled Parrot and has hit a 4 ft square target at several 100 yds at Ft Sill range.

Cannons require extra safety procedures because of the [typically] large amounts of powder used per charge [6 oz to 2 lbs depending on gun].  They also require thorough worming & wet swabbing between rounds.  Train yourself and any crew to keep a safe position around the piece.

[davec2]

Mike R,

Thanks for the note.  Yes, the neighbor boy was in training so his position, while safe for a wet swab, is not a good practice to get into.  By the end of the day, he was behind the plane of the muzzle for worming, wet and dry swabbing.  I reserved loading powder and round shot (one hand, no head on the rammer, etc.) for myself until these younger fellows have a little more experience.

You can't be too safe.  It is all great fun unless something really goes wrong.

Dave C

P.S.  I had to laugh when you mentioned the car alarms.  Many years ago, I fired the gun for New Year's Eve in the neighborhood.  I had invited all the neighbors and everyone liked to see the gun fire.  All went well.  The gun went off just at midnight and everyone went home.  However, in the morning, several of the cars on the street would not start.  They all had a dead battery.  It seems the the blast from the gun had caused several glove compartment doors to pop open and, by late morning, the little light that came on in each glove box had drained the car batteries.  I spent most of New Year's Day jump starting everyone's car.

[Mike R]

You have an understanding neighborhood!  We had the police descend upon us one time when we were asked to fire our cannon at an event in a certain north Louisiana city. It set off not only car alarms but also the bank alarm and they thought at first it was a break-in...it seems the event organizers had not cleared the firing with the local police....we no longer fire the gun at the LA Tech games--not sure why after 4 -5 years of it, but there was a change of Univ. management and I suspect a few complaints about noise and acrid smoke...too bad, I enjoyed watching the football games from our vantage point on a hill near one end zone.

We also had run-ins with a certain woman who lived next to a large field where we did Civil War battle reenactments.  She claimed [probably rightly] that our cannons [there were 20 or so] were traumatizing her chihuahua dog!  We were several hundred yards from her, but they are LOUD!  We eventually moved the battle site to a more remote location after she raised H#ll with the local authorities...

[heelerau]

this is a  1/3 scale 32lb naval gun, 1 1/4inch bore fires aball of about 1/2 lb with a charge of 23drs of 2f. It is cast iron around a heavy wall steel tube with welded breach plug. I have a wooden mount much like it would have been mounted in a ship which fits in the back of my old pickup truck, fun to fire from it.
The full size gun pictured in the thread is real neat and would be a big old bunch of fun to shoot

Cheers

Gordon