OT: Pipe, bowling ball cannon....maybe.

I believe that every man (and some women) goes through a period of his life where he's struck with the inexplicable urge to construct seige machinery. Fortunately for me, I never got beyond spud guns, model rocket engine launchers, the occasional inciendiary model rocket and an impressive shipboard CO2 cartridge mortar.

This man has obviously taken it to the next level.

As much as I would love to take on a similar (although smaller scaled) project, I'm not a metallurgist and my welding skills probably aren't up to the job. A guy can dream, though...

His lack of a carriage for the gun worries me. Other than that, I don't see why it shouldn't work.

Great link as always, Kismet. Thanks.
 
If it's real that guy should have his own TV show. Hell, he oughta have his own channel.
 
I believe that every man (and some women) goes through a period of his life where he's struck with the inexplicable urge to construct seige machinery.>>>>>>>>>> Satori

I'd like to see it all. I don't care about missles and bombs, but wood and iron/steel machines that launch or crush or propel with explosion are neat.


munk
 
I prefer the college students who build working trebuchets for their history or physics projects. :cool:
 
Like the poster in the background of the X-Files office...
I WANT TO BELIEVE

I will own a cannon someday, if I have to cast it myself.

But 3 ozs. Pyrodex should only be enough for, like, a fart outta that thing-
not to throw a bowling ball out of sight. If he shot a kid's kickball, maybe. Seriously, it would have gone 25 ft., no?

Also- the smoke cloud- would have been much larger....


Ad Astra :confused: :confused:
 
I love seige equipment:) My buddy and I always said that once we got out our own and finally had the finacial backing we were going to make some of the coolest siege weapons seen since the dark ages:) We used to dabble in the stuff in high school before common sense took over (ie our better halves). One of my favorite guns was made out of PVC and powered by compressed air. It shot tennis balls, but not very well. it would only launch the balls about 80 feet with a dull FWOOPT sound. not very exciting until we found a copy of the Jolly Roger's Cookbook on the net. Now, take that same tennis ball and fill it with heads of box full of strike anywhere matches. make some vent slits so the matches get oxygen. Fire it out of that gun at a hard surface (in our case the ground was hard enough) and watch it become a rolling ball of molten rubber and flames:)
Great fun until it self ignites in the gun as you ramrod it in and burns the gun in half. Sad day, but we have vowed to rebuild.

Jake
 
There is a gentleman not too far away (in the Kaskaskia River bottoms near Bartelso IL, for anyone interested) who has built his own fortress over the past 20 or 30 years, by carrying each stone by hand. The outer stone walls are about 6 feet thick, with openings for his cannons. (he owns several Civil War type field guns. I'm assuming they're reproductions, but considering how "eccentric" this fellow is, they may be origionals.) Now and then the farmer neighbor lets him lob rounds out into his field a half mile away.

To get closer to on topic, he built one of his mortars himself. I forget now what kind of steel piece he made it from, but I recall he said it took three days straight on a lathe. Even made his own carriage for it, and sometimes pulls it behind his horse in parades.
 
Could one build siege engines powerful enough to take down the walls of banks?
There oughta be a good SF book in there somewhere... Can you imagine the police unit called to the scene, and watch in wonder as a BOULDER flies over their heads and crashes through the walls of the building behind them? What's the code for that?

munk
 
I'm trying to get a friend in the construction industry to make a black-powder mortar for me (its legal). I want the ID to fit a soda can.

John, 11C Hades ab altar
 
These guys are claiming about 1,000 yards with 2 ounces of black powder...

http://www.bcvc.net/old/

Search for "black powder bowling ball cannon" in Google, or the like, and you'll come up with hundreds of entries. Black powder is powerful, and 3 ounces is 2 Dixie cups full... :eek:

Looks like lots of fun, although I'd probably be more interested in a soup can or tomato sauce mortar. Hope it stays legal! :D I'm sure it's definitely illegal here in Italy! :mad:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top