W.R.Buchanan
05-28-2011, 05:24 PM
Today, Saturday 28 May 2011 was the first day of our annual Cannon and Mortar shoot at the Ojai Valley Gun Club north of Ojai CA.
There was a bunch of cool little guns there ranging from one that shot 1.5" Steel balls, thru a bunch that shoot beer cans full of cement, to one the shoots bowling balls. There was also a real live 45-70 Gatling Gun, and the guy had loaded all 2000 rounds of ammo for the weekend with a single stage rockchucker press. He is very serious about not having any squib loads lodging a bullet in bore and blowing up his $145,000 Gatling Gun.
Everything is set up on our 200 yard line with a variety of targets to shoot at. Any hit by anything is pretty much luck of the draw. However it is easy to know when somebody gets close as you here the ooh and ahhh's down the line.
The Bowling Ball Mortar is the star of the show and shoots 14 lb bowling balls nearly out of sight strait up on nearly every shot.
3 OZ of 1F Black Powder is the routine charge..
I was only able to take a few pics before my Camera Battery went dead (I'm an idiot) but you can get a pretty good idea of this gun from the pics I did get.
The gun is made from 8.5" 1" wall 4140 Chrome-Moly tube. 120,00 psi strength. It weighs 600+ lbs.
It has a solid breach end which goes up into the tube 6" and is held in place by both the trunions, and then seal welded inside and out with several passes of 7018 rod..
The internal breach face is radiused to fit the 8.550 dia of the balls (Apparently bowling balls are 8.550+/-.015) the bore is 8.565 ish and then there is a counterbore in the breach face to accomidate the charge, no wadding of any kind is used.. It will hold up to one pound of powder. When they "proofed" the gun at one of the Coalinga cannon shoots.they loaded it with One Pound of powder and it shot a 14 lb ball 1.25 miles! There is no doubt in my mind that this gun could live thru a full pound of Bullseye completely unscathed. It is that strong!
The mount for the gun is able to function both as a mortar mount or a cannon mount allowing either style of usage with 90 degrees + of travel. The normal usage is set at about 80 degrees vertical and results in about 300-400 yards distance and elevation of nearly 1500 ft AGL. If you don't track the ball right out of the gun you loose it!!! This is done in the interest of recycling the bowling balls as many times as possible, and finding them is the issue. Believe me everytime this thing goes off it is an "event" worthy of note:
Just lowering the the altitude setting 5 degrees results in the balls hitting on the back side of the large moutain we use as a backstop. The balls are impossible to find then.
This is one of the coolest guns I have ever seen in my 61 years!
Today I saw it fired as a cannon for the first time. The drop at 200 yards was about 2 feet !!!
Here's some pics and I will try to post some more tomarrow.
Randy
There was a bunch of cool little guns there ranging from one that shot 1.5" Steel balls, thru a bunch that shoot beer cans full of cement, to one the shoots bowling balls. There was also a real live 45-70 Gatling Gun, and the guy had loaded all 2000 rounds of ammo for the weekend with a single stage rockchucker press. He is very serious about not having any squib loads lodging a bullet in bore and blowing up his $145,000 Gatling Gun.
Everything is set up on our 200 yard line with a variety of targets to shoot at. Any hit by anything is pretty much luck of the draw. However it is easy to know when somebody gets close as you here the ooh and ahhh's down the line.
The Bowling Ball Mortar is the star of the show and shoots 14 lb bowling balls nearly out of sight strait up on nearly every shot.
3 OZ of 1F Black Powder is the routine charge..
I was only able to take a few pics before my Camera Battery went dead (I'm an idiot) but you can get a pretty good idea of this gun from the pics I did get.
The gun is made from 8.5" 1" wall 4140 Chrome-Moly tube. 120,00 psi strength. It weighs 600+ lbs.
It has a solid breach end which goes up into the tube 6" and is held in place by both the trunions, and then seal welded inside and out with several passes of 7018 rod..
The internal breach face is radiused to fit the 8.550 dia of the balls (Apparently bowling balls are 8.550+/-.015) the bore is 8.565 ish and then there is a counterbore in the breach face to accomidate the charge, no wadding of any kind is used.. It will hold up to one pound of powder. When they "proofed" the gun at one of the Coalinga cannon shoots.they loaded it with One Pound of powder and it shot a 14 lb ball 1.25 miles! There is no doubt in my mind that this gun could live thru a full pound of Bullseye completely unscathed. It is that strong!
The mount for the gun is able to function both as a mortar mount or a cannon mount allowing either style of usage with 90 degrees + of travel. The normal usage is set at about 80 degrees vertical and results in about 300-400 yards distance and elevation of nearly 1500 ft AGL. If you don't track the ball right out of the gun you loose it!!! This is done in the interest of recycling the bowling balls as many times as possible, and finding them is the issue. Believe me everytime this thing goes off it is an "event" worthy of note:
Just lowering the the altitude setting 5 degrees results in the balls hitting on the back side of the large moutain we use as a backstop. The balls are impossible to find then.
This is one of the coolest guns I have ever seen in my 61 years!
Today I saw it fired as a cannon for the first time. The drop at 200 yards was about 2 feet !!!
Here's some pics and I will try to post some more tomarrow.
Randy