Looking for a Place to Shoot a Cannon

[CrufflerSteve]

This a bit out of the usual. I have a couple a small smoothbore cannon that I take out to my club and shoot at berms but I have one that doesn't work.

My club is out on the plains so if something leaves the range it can really travel. I did a couple of live fires there at a 100 yard range with massive berms but it is capable of more. The officers of my club felt, and I agree, that using the other ranges there is unsafe. It needs a really good backstop - like a mountain.

I have a reproduction of a Civil War 2.25" Bronze Mountain Rifle. It is made with modern techniques so it is pretty safe to shoot. It is rifled and I have a mould for casting lead Minie ball rounds that work with the rifling. The rounds weigh a bit over 4 pounds. I have light ones for a 200 yard or so range and rounds with heavier skirts for long range with heavy powder loads.

A backstop would give me a nice feeling that I know where the round ends up. It would also be great to salvage the lead since it costs.

It produces a heck of a muzzle flash but as long as I'm not sitting in dry grass there is little fire danger. I put the powder in aluminum foil so it won't fire burning junk out the barrel. It would be good if the shooting spot was fairly flat and level. I've made plywood targets that I attach 2x4 to and stake the 2x4 into the ground with rebar.

Any suggestions of a place?

Steve

[Tim]

I just have to say, that is COOL. COOL. I have no suggestion, but I would like to see it. Good luck.

[Graves]

I would go after hours to your nearest Smart Car Dealership.

[CrufflerSteve]

I would go after hours to your nearest Smart Car Dealership.

Let me qualify - non-felonious places to shoot a cannon. There are so many places and people that really deserve it but I doubt if the authorities would let me keep my cannon if I did.

Steve

[GunTroll]

Put that thing through a chronograph yet??? What velocities do you guess you get with your various weighing balls. What distance would you also guess these projectiles will travel in air and on the ground (level) rolling if not stopped with a burm?

[Irving]

Let me qualify - non-felonious places to shoot a cannon. There are so many places and people that really deserve it but I doubt if the authorities would let me keep my cannon if I did.

Steve

There goes my idea to shoot it into Congress.


I guess you could always take it on a South African cruise...

[CrufflerSteve]

Put that thing through a chronograph yet??? What velocities do you guess you get with your various weighing balls. What distance would you also guess these projectiles will travel in air and on the ground (level) rolling if not stopped with a burm?

If I ever get to doing live fire I'll try to measure velocity. A normal chrony would never work since the wave of gases is huge and would total it. I was thinking of taking a chrony with the sensors on as long a bar as it supports and laying them in a trench, perhaps with a small berm between them and the cannon to push gas and debris up. I could probably improvise some sort of sky screen up high.

It can be hard to get decent chrony readings with BP loads due to the wads and smoke. This would be orders of magnitude worse than a 45/70.

I believe the military get measurements by having some light wires that are clipped by the shell.

I did get some idea of the force in my live fire. I was shoting at a berm made out of a hillside. The 2.25" diameter, 4 pound round went 3 to 5 feet into hard clay. That's a lot of foot/lbs.

I spoke with a fellow who used one of these cannon in competition in the Midwest. He took it to Camp Grayling where they do 1000 yard shoots for rifled artillery. He found these buried themselves 8 feet into the ground at long range.

This explains all these movies where people go flying from being shot. They're actually being shot with a cannon. Hollywood just makes it look like a shotgun or pistol.

Steve

[jackmode9316]

That is so cool.

Ive seen ones about 1/2 that size shot before, and even that was pretty intense.

There has got to be some wide open space somewhere around here though.

[ChunkyMonkey]

There goes my idea to shoot it into Congress.

.

Damn it stu... now we are all on the list.

[Irving]

I know they had cannons last year at the machine gun shoot that was this last month. Anyone know anything about the land they shoot on?