Good Ole Fashion Giveaway - Winners Posted

[MarkR]

My most memorable event was when I was about 12 or 13 (almost 50 years ago) We were no strangers to guns and had access to black powder ($5.00/lb at Taylor's Store in Sebringville Ontario. We had built a couple muzzle loading cannons in my cousins fabrication shop and to date, the largest was 1" pipe, all were fired successfully and a lot of fun so... we decided to go bigger. We found a piece of 2" seamless pipe about 30" long; welded a breach block in; had a piece of steel tubing that was a light drive fit over it and we reinforced about 16" of the breach area with this, then welded an external breach block over the original for extra strength. We drilled in a touch-hole, and counter sunk it to hold some powder for priming. It had a couple of pieces of 3/8" rod welded to it so it pointed about 50 or 60 degrees in the air.

We needed a projectile; the week before we had been firing wheel-nuts through an old, derelict Plymouth car ('61?) with our 1" cannon, and recalled it had bullet shaped rubber hard stops on the front end suspension. We got one of those. It was too big to fit so we took it over to the course emery stone and ground it down.

We loaded it with about a half ounce (by volume) FFFg; drove in two pages of crumpled newspaper for a wad, then drove the bullet shaped piece of rubber against the wad with a piece of 1 1/4" pipe and a 2 1/2 lb hand sledge.

We primed it, cast lots, and I got the honors of touching it off. Used a broom handle wrapped in wired on rag on the end, soaked in diesel fuel.

Judas, Larry and Hosepipe, what a noise! Spruce boughs and one limb fell out of one of trees behind the welding shop; one of the windows was broken from the concussion, and our ears were ringing (mine still do; a bit of a legacy).

The branch on the ground was between 4 or 5" in diameter, but torn like like it was ripped off.

...and did we ever get schidt!

We were forbidden from building more cannons, and were limited to only "real" guns by our parents from that day forward.

Other than my hearing (and there are other contributing factors, I can assure you) no humans, and only one tree was injured.

BTW, the sharp edges on a wheel nut help them go through and through an old Plymouth better than a 2 3/4" 12 ga. slug.

These events all took place in a small village (not on our farm) in southern Ontario. No one called the cops either. Good times!!!