New bowling ball mortar

[IronMonster]

Well, I met fellow just this last week who had a desire to build some bowling ball mortars, He has built a few in the past and happened to have a pretty ideal chunk of material. I offered to saw up the 500 lb chunk of tube and was gifted a 20" chunk of it to craft into my own artillery.



This is one of the mortars he has built in the past



I have done a bit of looking around and am not sure if I want to put a pivot pin under it or have trunnions. I think the pin under is more typical but I like the look of trunnions. I would like depending on how tight the bore fit you might have some issue with welding on heavy trunnions.

Anyway I thought I would start a post and maybe it would motivate me to keep after it. The tube needs bored and its too big for my little lathe so its off to the machine shop and I am not sure how long it will take. It only needs about a 1/8" taken out of the bore to be perfect for a bowling ball.

The only real drag is after its built I have no idea where I can take the thing for a little test fire session.

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[pdrake]

The only real drag is after its built I have no idea where I can take the thing for a little test fire session.

Yakima Firing Range. Just pull off Exit 8 ("Military Area"), hide behind the gravel pile. Fire to the west, nobody will be looking that way.

Run.

Let me know when you do it; I will help.

 

[timac]

That's awesome.

 

[Capn Jack]

Built a "Beer Can" mortar years ago. It was a Blast (Pun).
It shot "Cocktail" beer cans full of cement, 200 yards, with 1 oz of FFG BP.
I had to use a fuse for ignition as the muzzle blast was horrendous.

 

[IronMonster]

I am going to figure out some sort of percussion ignition just because I think it would be neat, have a string to pull to fire.

 

[Classic]

Este's Rockets (hobby stuff) has a battery ignition setup that should work to ignite from a distance.
I used to shoot rockets with my son but shifted my focus to guns

 

[IronMonster]

wires and batteries are not near as cool as a percussion cap and a string.. Just saying...

 

[Capn Jack]

I used .22 blanks to fire my 1/3rd scale Parrot Rifle. The crimped ones. Not the ones with the
cardboard wad. I learned that the hard way...

 

[Stomper]

You could kit-bash a .22cal powder actuated nail gun for the percussion device...

 

[Capn Jack]

I used an electric motor brush follower for a hammer. Cocked it back against the spring and pulled a cord to release it.

Never did find any of the .22 case's after the gun went off...

Safer to do with a fuse, but not nearly as much fun.

 

[Deebow]

Is there a point to these things? Nope.

And that is the point...

 

[Capn Jack]

What to do with the old zincs off of your boat.
Cast them into cannon balls.

 

[michaelwilson98]

So I might be a party pooper here but how legal is this? I want to build one but I also like not being in prison

 

[Capn Jack]

Legal ? Got no I.D. Might class as an explosive device.

Mine were certainly over .50 caliber.

I liked my pneumatic cannon the best. Very little noise.... But required a compressor.

Guess you could use a tire pump, but would take forever, (95 psi) and my accumulator
was a 4' long 3" dia. pipe.

A couple of the local LE's used to shoot it off of my back porch...Must have been legal huh.

 

[michaelwilson98]

That thing looks awesome. However it doesn't use gunpowder as a propellant so I'm curious more about cannons I guess you could say. Not very law savy so I was curious who knew. And do shoot out of that thing?

 

[IronMonster]

Black powder canons are perfectly Legal most places, however it's pretty easy to do things with them that would land you in hot water. I have had several, one was confiscated by LE but only because the idiot who had it decided it would be fun to fire it in his backyard within city limits. I have fired them off hundreds of times, 90% of the time with nothing but toilet paper in the bore

 

[Capn Jack]

The one in the picture would send an old "D" cell 500 - 600 yards. Not too PC, but oh well....

For a "Powder" gun, try a search on Google for muzzle loading cannons. There must be a Site out there. It's expensive shooting. My 1 1/4" bore 1/3 scale 10lb. Parrot Rifle used 2 oz. of fg and 16 oz of lead every shot. Any one of my rifles is cheaper to shoot.

 

[erudne]

I've been saving champagne bottles 4 inch bore

 

[redmud]

I made one in high school I bored it to fit a AA battery I used fuse to light it off.
As I was drawing up the plans for it the teacher looked over my shoulder and said I couldn't call it a cannon on the plans, he said he would get fired and I wouldn't be able to make it, so he said to call it a fish bat.

 

[xlsbob]

I have several black powder cannons and a couple mortars that fire golf balls and beer cans. You can shoot them anywhere you can shoot a rifle, at least in Oregon. Greybeard Outdoors has a forum for black powder mortars and cannons that has a wealth of information .