• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Built Dad a BP cannon 25 years ago, and now finally building my own - pics and story in .pdf file.

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

bzzh8c

32 Cal
Joined
Apr 15, 2021
Messages
11
Reaction score
20
Greetings!

Many years ago we built a tennis ball black powder cannon for my Dad and fired it regularly over the years, usually 5 or 10 times around each 4th of July family get togethers. A tennis ball comes out moving really fast, but slows down like a whiffle ball, and even with 4 oz of powder, the max range was about 400 yards and it would be falling straight down by then.

This year I decided to build the cannon I wanted back then, and attached here is a .pdf file with pictures and the story so far. Please Take a look and any feedback or advice on how to finish this project in style is more than appreciated!

I just joined, and have been enjoyed reading about other people's cannons shown here very much. Thanks!

Todd
 

Attachments

  • Cannon Project .pdf
    1.1 MB · Views: 282
The firing pics are from my Dad's cannon years ago, about a 2 1/2" tennis ball cannon.
The new one I'm building is further down in the slides, but it should rock the same!
I hope to finish and fire it (noise mode) at our annual July 4th fireworks show.
 
We run it with a couple of oz of powder usually, but every once in awhile for really BIG bangs, we'd put 4 oz in it. Here's a video of a night shot with that much. We called them "Boomer Shots". The recoil was pretty strong for Boomers, but the cannon weighed about 100 lbs and was well behaved. We've shot it hundreds of times.

Here's another video of a regular shot:



And here's a "Boomer Shot" at night:



(The elevation wedge got dislodged frequently on Boomer shots)

People said they could hear our cannon echo in town 5 miles away easily.

Todd
 
There is one, but I didn't use it that time. They wanted to hear a really big boom, so I just taped a 4 oz load to a fuse and slid it down from the muzzle about halfway to keep the pressure down. 4 oz was the biggest charge I ever ran through that cannon, and would only do it empty and with the charge suspended halfway from the muzzle. That 100 lb cannon bucked pretty hard even still. That cannon is now (mostly) retired, but we figured we shot it several hundred times over the years and it held up very well.
 
For the 2" cannon...

I put a fuse in the vent hole, then add 2oz. of 1F, tap in TP, then add 8oz. sand or gravel, and tap that down. That thing jumps when it goes off....
 
Back
Top