3,500 gr. cast boolit launcher

[machinegun]

Attached I hope you will see one of my cannons. The barrel is 58 lbs. of brass. It fires a 1/2 lb cast ball (3,500 gr). Wheels are 22" dia, barrel is 22". Yes the grease zerk does lube the axle. I needed six hands to glue spokes into hub, six pieces of wheel onto spokes and the rim onto the wheel. Used gorilla glue because it is supposed to be waterproof. Why didn't someone tell me how much gorilla glue expands as it dries...the carpet seen under the wheel was not protected, I had to rotate carpet so piece seen is currently under couch. Swmbo will eventually find, but maybe I can blame on dog.
I have since mounted a red dot on top of the barrel. At one of our shooting sessions earlier this summer I put four rounds into approx. 2' area at 400 yds. Unfortunately, I was slightly low and left of the plywood sheet I was shooting at.
Thought maybe someone would enjoy.

[45nut]

beautiful work there. how about a muzzle pic ?

[Morgan Astorbilt]

Congrats on a fine job, especially the wheels. I've been building cannons for forty years, but never attempted to build my own spoked wheels.
Have you ever calculated the muzzle energy generated by your loads? My largest, a 3/4 scale six pounder firing a 3-1/2lb (24,500gr.) 2-5/8" lead ball, ahead of 14oz. FG, or C grade, generates 106,500 Ft. Lbs. @ 1400fps. Velocities chronographed at 30ft., without sky shields, (to survive muzzle blast) with my Oehler 35P.
Morgan

[machinegun]

Here is the muzzle view (and a couple more) just taken. Bore is 1-3/8". Fires a 1-1/4" dia. ball. Cleaned her up good once this season, but needs help again. BP is nasty to deal with. Lots of kudos to forebears who only fired this stuff.
Don't have the formula for energy, but 3,500 grs. at 900 fps shouldn't be hard to figure. Don't have a chrony, but I can make a big splash in a pond 300 yds away in about 1-1/2 seconds. Figuring the ball is slowing all the way, near the muzzle should be close to that.

[oksmle]

62,938.62 fpe....

[Blammer]

a red dot on a cannon! LOL

that's funny but good idea!

beautiful cannon!

[runfiverun]

nice,niice, niiiice.
you'll fit in fine here.

[LAcaster]

Nice work did you make the barrel your self or have it cast for you Its getting hard to find good bronze barrels any more great craftmanship on the carrage too if you want to try something impressive make up a canister round with 440 round balls and fire for effect at a 50 yd target awsome

[Heavy lead]

Absolutely awesome. I Love the red dot. How bout a long eye relief mil-dot and a charge at the tip of that boolit for effect.

[missionary5155]

That is one beautiful piece of work. Now how about some grapeshot ? Or beehive ? Or canister... may be some pirates lurking abpout that pond.

[machinegun]

Thanks guys,

What I have found is the 1-1/4" ball patched with a 4"square of lubed denim works great when a 35mm film tube has .050 cast balls set like 000 buckshot. Two north & south, then two east & west. The film tube will hold 16 balls like this. Then all gaps in the tube can be filled with sawdust and the cap snapped in place and sent down on top of the 1-1/4" ball. The .050 balls appear effective to 75 -100 yds. The large ball would probably be effective past 1/4 mi.

[35remington]

Everyone's math for KE is bugger-all for correctness.

Morgan's big scaled down cannon gets 106,500 ft. lbs. or close to it. About eight times a 50 BMG round. Or approximately equal to a modern 30mm cannon round.

Machinegun's 900 fps estimate for his minicannon yields 6,297 ft. lbs, elephant gun energy.

[Firebird]

If the pond is infested with pirates you need to start with some chain shot to take down their rigging and keep them from getting away. Then grape shot or canister shot to sweep the decks and finally solid shot to send them to the bottom. All the different ammo types have their specific purpose.

:Fire: http://bestsmileys.com/pirate/3.gif

[machinegun]

Forgot to mention a machinist friend made the barrel for me. Also there used to be up to 100 geese at a time on the pond. This year none. They do learn.

[fishhawk]

well the ball for mine goes a pound and a half, thats 10500 gr 2 inch gun on a naval carriage tube is 44 inches long and 7 1/2 inches dia. at the "breach" end, makes a great silo gun! if your going to take down a silo have fun doing it!

[Morgan Astorbilt]

Everyone's math for KE is bugger-all for correctness.

Morgan's big scaled down cannon gets 106,500 ft. lbs. or close to it. About eight times a 50 BMG round. Or approximately equal to a modern 30mm cannon round.

Machinegun's 900 fps estimate for his minicannon yields 6,297 ft. lbs, elephant gun energy.

You're right. I forgot to click on the energy cell after entering weight and velocity into the spreadsheet.:-o
Morgan

[Morgan Astorbilt]

This is a photo of my son, Ordnance Sgt. Levi Astorbilt(These are our "cowboy" names), standing next to the cannon in question. We regularly fire it with blanks at special cowboy matches. All parts with the exception of the wheels and rope for the prolonge, were made by me from scratch.

Sgt. Major Morgan Astorbilt
1st. NC Artillery

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa159/pgfaini/Artilleryman1.jpg

[Jim]

I didn't know artillary wore two side arms.

[Morgan Astorbilt]

Jim, I noticed you're from Charleston. Ever been to the new shooting facility at the Citadel? That's where I occasionally shoot International Style Pistol, along side the Citadel team. Their coach is Joel "Doc" Sexton, the Forensic Pathologist in Newberry, SC. This is "serious" shooting, not the "fun" shooting of Cowboy Action.:Fire:
Morgan

[Old Ironsights]

My question is... How do you recover all that lead when it's at the bottom of the pond?

Wasteful... ;)

[Bob Krack]

Wow, Machinegun -

That gun is quite a machine! (and yours too, Morgan).

Vic

[machinegun]

Doc Sexton is a the greatest. He loaned me guns to shoot air and free pistol on my first trip to Ft. Benning for an International match. He also coached my son when he was stationed at Chas. AFB. I won his Centerfire match with my S&W Model 52 in 1994. One of my nicest trophies. My son was the SC air pistol champ for several years in the 90's.

[Morgan Astorbilt]

Machinegun, Ever shoot the USA Shooting PTO's at the Wolf Creek Olympic Shooting Facility? If so, we may have met. I used to shoot them almost every month until those SOB's from Fulton County stole it from us, Sius Ascor target equipment and all. I made the Nationals in 1999, but didn't go, I was only in the upper third of the field. Planned to increase my training, and hopefully get a shot at the US Shooting Team in 10M or FP the next year. Lost the sight in my right eye three months later. Should have gone. Got my sight back, but can't seem to get my mental focus to the necessary level. Old age, I guess, we can't all be Don Nygords. Now, my TOZ and Morini 162E are becoming safe queens, along with my Standard Pistols and Center Fire.
Morgan

[machinegun]

Forgot to mention, that is one beautiful piece of work (your cannon).

I have only shot 6 or 8 International matches. Never at Wolf Creek. My son shot there a number of times as well as Chino, CA (They are both closed now). My son made the AF WCAP program (World Class Athlete Program) in 2002 and the AF moved him and his family to Colo. Spgs. from 2002 to 2004 in order to train under Erich Buljung (Olympic Pistol Coach at that time) in prep for 2004 Olympics.
He would have had to beat the same two (Daryl Szarinski and Jason Turner) who attended the Beijing Olympics. Unfortunately, he came in sixth after all the preliminary matches had been completed. By the way, Jason won bronze in air at Beijing after another athlete failed drug testing.

Brian Zins (8 time National Champion at Camp Perry) came in third that year and also did not get to go, so my son was in good company.

[xyrth]

awesome work, beautiful cannon.

[Molly]

Its getting hard to find good bronze barrels any more

There's a place in Cincinnati where a buddy used to work that does a lot of cannon work. Ever see a lathe that could turn out barrels for the Mighty Mo? They do a lot of brass / bronze cannon barrels too, and with some mighty fine tolerances. If anyone wants contact info or a web site address, I'll get hold of my buddy.

Molly

[xyrth]

There's a place in Cincinnati where a buddy used to work that does a lot of cannon work. Ever see a lathe that could turn out barrels for the Mighty Mo? They do a lot of brass / bronze cannon barrels too, and with some mighty fine tolerances. If anyone wants contact info or a web site address, I'll get hold of my buddy.

Molly


i do a lot of work in ductile iron pipe, and went on a plant tour of one of my suppliers a few weeks back ... saw some of the biggest lathe's imaginable, could handle 64" x 20' pipe ... crazy, crazy stuff.

[Red River Rick]

Very nice pieces you have there gentleman, true workmanship, you both should be proud. I have one that I've been working one. The Barrel is a piece of "DOM Seamless" tubing, 2 1/2" OD with a 1.000" bore, so it'll be plenty strong for the intended purpose.

Now, how about some pics of these things actually shooting, at something "Interesting", with a charge of "Grape Shot".

RRR

[Molly]

i do a lot of work in ductile iron pipe, and went on a plant tour of one of my suppliers a few weeks back ... saw some of the biggest lathe's imaginable, could handle 64" x 20' pipe ... crazy, crazy stuff.

It's been a while, and I didn't have a tape measure with me, but if my memory is anywhere near right, their lathe could handle something like twice that length. No kidding! They didn't have much demand for that kind of size (BG), but they kept it in their shop for turning small stuff like civil war repro barrels, and apparently did a pretty fair business at it. Wonder what a monster like that was ever built for in the first place? Maybe it DID make the tubes for the Mighty Mo.
Molly