Billiard Ball Cannon

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Deltadart

New member
I received a cannon barrel from my son as a gift. The barrel is 18 inches long about 4 inches in diameter with a 2 1/4 inch bore. Fires a mini soda can or billiard ball with a 2 oz black powder charge. I am making the undercarriage, a copy of the civil war 12 pound howitzer. It becoming a fun project so far, has anyone else done one of these? Any advise is welcome on this build. CCC 1.jpg

CCC 2.jpg
 
P

Pahoo

New member
Can be lots of fun and be careful !!!

has anyone else done one of these? Any advise is welcome on this build.
Click to expand...
Absolutely and they are a hoot to work with and can be addictive. I have made mortars; naval ship guns/cannons and others. Now then, the carriage looks more like the Civil War shore batteries cannons. On some cannons, I made two carriages; one for show and the other for shooting. They are a lot of fun and not only can be addictive but dangerous. We once shot one, too close to my buddies truck and blew out, one of his side-windows. I find the location of the touch/fuse hole, a bit interesting. What is it's position, in relationship to the bottom of the bore?

Be Safe !!!
 
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Deltadart

New member
The fuze hole is to the back of the chamber, which is a pocket about 1 1/4 inches in diameter to the rear of the bore. The gun is very heavy to the back end. This barrel comes from Coaches Cannon Club in Utah.
 
R

Ricklin

New member
Back in the crazy 80's my brother acquired a set of snooker balls.
Solid Ivory.
Don't shoot those.
Stolen in a burglary a year or two later.
 
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Deltadart

New member
No worries about that. Pool balls are way too expensive to shoot, I can not imagine anyone doing that. The mini pop cans filled with sand or
something will work for me. I have several large sinker molds for sturgeon fishing in the Columbia river that might work, however I want to be able to recover them, that's just too much lead to waste.
 
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bedbugbilly

New member
Years ago, I shot with a group that had a cannon that would take frozen orange juice concentrate cans - we collected them and filled them with cement.

Later, I shot with a group and we had two repro Civil War 10 pound Parrotts - on rifled and one smoothbore - 3" bore - both South Bend Replicas. the rifled tis took a conical round with lugs on it to fit the rifling - the smoothbore took round ball - we used aluminum scrap to melt down and cast with.

If you have a mold, you might try zinc to cast with.

That looks like a nice tube and a great project! Hope you'll share photos as you progress with your carriage - and don't forget to make a limber chest to go with it!
 
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Deltadart

New member
Bedgugbilly, I had to redneck the scaling of the plans from an 1841 drawing, but they came out OK. The stock trail, cheeks, and axel frame are cut out. They look pretty good at this point. The barrel is not a replica of any civil war tube that I know of, but you have what you have. I used Loral Mountain Forge browning solution on it for a deep plum brown. All went well except for a small spot in on the back face of the breech. It appeared to me they tig welded to fill the dimple where the live center was. That of course changes the grain of the metal and the heat affected zone show in the finish. It is not too bad a spot a little less than a dime but it does bug me. I will be adding a knob or ball to the back end to cover that.
 
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Deltadart

New member
Thanks Hawg, I am just learning the terms for the parts of the cannon. The issue now is finding a cascabel to put on the tube. I am thinking at the moment a 1 7/8 inch trailer ball stripped of the chrome, fitted and browned may work.
 
4

44 AMP

Staff
Interesting project, hope it works out well for you.

Just FYI, and sadly I cannot remember the name of the outfit, but some years back there were some folks making complete replicas of WWII anti tank guns, I remember specifically the German 50mm PAK and the US/British 57mm/6 pounder.

Complete, faithful reproductions, everything down to the tires. The only thing not accurately reproduced were the bores and firing mechanism, they were bored as muzzle loading cannon to avoid legal complications. Projectile was reported to be a soda can filled with cement (powder, not concrete mix) to give a nice big "poof" of dust when it hit. No idea what the powder charge was, sorry.

And yes, they were on the expensive side of "spendy"...:D
 
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Jim Watson

New member
Old story about the guy who had a cannon overbored for his chosen size of can. A can full of concrete had a lot of windage and therefore did not carry very far.
But one day he loaded one with a void in the filler, it expanded to seal the bore and went a LOT farther. Moo, thud, hamburger.
 
F

FITASC

New member
Check the size of solid rubber lacrosse balls, they might work and should be cheaper than billiard balls
 
4

44caliberkid

New member
“When they wrote the 2nd amendment they didn’t mean you could have any gun you wanted. You couldn’t have a cannon.” - Pres. Joe Biden
Yes you could Joe, and you still can. Congratulations on your new boomer. I love the sound of a large charge of black powder going off. And it smells like victory. :)
 
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