Home made muzzle loading cannon

[blackberg]

Take the wheels off

I was going to say the same thing

nice work there

-bb

[Asphodel]

Scarecrow,

If your friend is a good machinist, and has a good lathe, with a long enough bed to chuck the muzzle end of your barrel, and have the breech end in a steady rest, the obvious idea is to make it a breech-loader.

There are probably few toolmakers living today who could set up the tooling for a Welin thread, but you could improvise.

Consider the Winchester M97/M12 take-down interrupted thread, and replicate that, only with a 'buttress' thread configuration. Make up the breech-block first, and use it as the gage for the internal thread in the barrel.

Fit the breech-block to a 'reasonable' torque, and strike a 'draw mark' across both parts, then, using the draw mark as a reference, back off the breech-block, and lay out quarters. Set the breech-block up in a dividing head, and mill the thread away in those two quarters (just like a Winchester take-down thread)

You may not be able to make a mill setup to mill out the barrel, but you can remove those quarters of thread with a die grinder with a Carboloy rotary file, using the breech-block as a gage.

Bore the breech-block, and make up a 'mushroom' and 'gas check pad'. Drill the mushroom stem for the primer, and make up a simple electric or percussion firing system.

Proportion your parts from observation of older artillery pieces, which were made from 'gun iron', a far less strong material than modern chrome-moly DOM tubing.....should be a reasonable 'factor of safety' there.

Have I done this?........well, lets just say that I've 'seen it done' and helped with some of the cuts and fit-up........ : )

cheers

Carla

[AJAX22]

I'd be warry of that meathod of capping.

The number one problem homemade cannons have is blowing the breach out.... and that looks to be quite weak in that cannon.

Another possibility you might want to consider is using a dissasembled hydrolic ram.

[Scarecrow Repair]

More construction details

The material is machine tool steel, altho that means little to me. The breech has a 2.5" plug which had to be forced in, a good tight fit. It was countersunk and the whole back end welded. Then a pipe (of the same material, I think) was split lengthwise, which sprung it open a bit and it was slipped over the breech end, another tight fit. The split was welded its entire length, both ends were completely welded, and for the final measure, a thick breech plate was welded on.

He welds for a living. Locals who run dozers and backhoes all day call on him to weld broken tracks, frames, arms, whatever. I assume that part of it is well done, cleaned first etc.

[Mikeb]

That sounds pretty good to me. I like that he installed the press fit plug. I'll go out on a limb and say if it will take a proof load you are good to go.
Just to be safe find a good place to hide when you set off that proof load. It looks a bit like a parrot rifle from the Civil War.
take care
Mike

[Scarecrow Repair]

That sounds pretty good to me. I like that he installed the press fit plug. I'll go out on a limb and say if it will take a proof load you are good to go.
Just to be safe find a good place to hide when you set off that proof load. It looks a bit like a parrot rifle from the Civil War.
take care
Mike

We've been using a good foot of fuse so we have plenty of time to go hide :-) Unfortunately that makes it harder to get a good movie of it going off.

[AJAX22]

A mechanical bond will be better than a weld in most cases... he may want to add some cross pins to hold the breach plug in place just in case.

[Mikeb]

Yes Ajax22 is right on a pin would be a good thing. Maybe 1/2 inch or larger pin, and just for fun I would heat the whole thing up to 700 or 800 degrees just to temper any hard metal. Even going to normalization temp off the top of my head I would say 1400 f. Relax all the welding
take care
Mike

[command_liner]

In recent years I have made a series of cannons.

Most recently I made a set of 4 golf ball cannons with 32" OAL.

For a while IMS Irvine had a lot of cut-off super-heavy wall DOM
1.75" nominal ID tubing. This stuff is about a 1" wall thickness and
comes in at about 1.70" ID. Golf ball is 1.68" OD.

My OAL choice was dictated by the longest length I could turn on
my lathe.

For the breech, I cut 1.75" mild steel pins at about 2" long, turned
big shoulder (~0.75") on one end. The plugs were hot pressed into
the bores with a 20T press, and it took all 20T. After air cooling,
the turned shoulder, now forming an triangular ring, was welded
shut. After cooling, the end was faced flat.

Then I cut 1" mild steel slugs 4.5" in diameter and welded those
1" plates over the pressed-in plugs. The plates are welded to the
outside of the barrel, and the plugs are welded to the inside
of the barrel. The welds have 1" fillets.

Press + weld + cap + weld. Failure is not likely.

After cooling, I added 1.75" trunion pins at the balance point, drilled
the flash hole and turned the muzzle.

Then trunion bearings, and transport frames were made up. For my
personal cannon, I used the spoked steel wheels available from Northern Tool.
The rubber-coated steel wheels from McMaster are nice, but not worth
the extra $400.

Charge if ~3oz of FFFG CleanShot and 1 golf ball. Wadding is 2
paper towels. Ramrod is an old table leg. Cleaning system is a
dowel with a 1.75" stainless round brush on one end and green
Scotch Brite safety wired to the other end.

The cannon will recoil several feet.

If you have been to Burro Canyon near LA you might have seen me.
I shoot golf balls _over_ the mountains on the right side of the range.
Impressive noise too.

My next project is a breech-loading cannon with muzzle brake. I have
the barrel, trunion pins and brake on hand. The breech will be made
using 2.5" Acme threaded rod and coupling nuts. This stuff is used
to separate shoring plates in trenching systems and is available, but
not free. I can machine an interrupted thread for this application,
but it would be a lot of work.

[Mikeb]

Very nice Command Liner... I wouldn't mind seeing a picture of that...
take care
Mike

[FeelthySanchez]

Unknown pedigree barrel steel

Perhaps try & find out what grade of "machine tool steel" he fabricated the barrel from, then do a hardness test as a follow-up. Should be in the low-mid 30's, R 'C' scale - no more. Too hard/brittle=KABOOM

[grymster]

Yeah... I'd want to know just what "machine tool steel" means.

[gun toting monkeyboy]

To quote Johnny Bravo, "This won't end well..."

[evmo]

Quite a few years ago, I was shown a rather elegantly improvised 'self-defence' system involving hand-made miniature cannons.

A businessman......it wouldn't be nice to mention his name or city.....had some concern that he might be, someday, confronted in his office by a person threatening physical harm to him.

He was a quite competent machinist as well as a businessman, so he made himself a pair of miniature 1700's vintage naval guns, with the barrels machined out of billet 4140 and nice miniature hardwood replicas of the original style wheeled gun carriages used on the ships. (I can't remember the name of the hardwood, but there is an uncommon wood which has the grain of oak, but on a much smaller scale, so it looks like oak in a miniature)

The barrels were bored 58 cal, to use Minie ball, with 70 or so grns of double F, and kept loaded, as 'desk ornaments'. He was a 'chain smoker' so almost always had a cigarette lit.

The theory, as he explained it, was that, in case of a deadly threat, he could quickly swing one of the 'decorative' miniature guns toward the threat individual, and mash the coal of his cigarette into the touch-hole, firing the piece.

No, I never saw one actually fired......he said that they worked well on test.

cheers

Carla

Holy ****! Now that's just to cool for words...

[SeanCasey]

Wow, I ignorantly never knew you could legally build a cannon. I guess I never even thought about it. I supposed I don't see why you couldn't, it is just an area of law I didn't even think about since I don't follow black power stuff.

Cool stuff anyhow. So what are the laws for devices like this, is there an bore size restrictions before you run into destructive device laws, or are you go as long as whatever you fire doesn't explode? How small of a cannon can you build legally? What are the rules regarding this?