Posted on 06/17/2019 2:46:18 PM PDT by BenLurkin
One of three Wisconsin men charged with making a homemade “cannon” that exploded, killing a man, pleaded not guilty, authorities said....charged with homicide by negligent handling of explosives, a felony.
The men were using a 4-foot-long, half-inch-thick steel pipe with a plug welded onto the bottom, according to the criminal complaint. The device exploded at a home in Marion, sending a piece of shrapnel that killed Paul Casperson, 44, of Belvidere, Illinois, on the evening of May 26.
“Niemer indicated he had brought a pipe, that he had manipulated with a plug welded onto the bottom, over to the party. He described the device as a ‘cannon.’ He indicated ‘we dumped shotgun powder in the tube. We lit it once and it just flared up. We did it again but this time we used some paper toweling and put it in the pipe with a stick. We all stood by the fence. [The victim] was standing by the side of the camper. When it went off, he landed on the ground,'”
(Excerpt) Read more at losangeles.cbslocal.com ...
Gunpowder inside an enclosed metal tube tends to make a fair bomb.
These guys needed some training or research.
This is high school stuff, so the fact that it was a school reunion is bizarrely appropriate...
I suspect alcohol may been involved.
Obviously they were ignorant of the pressures involved and the materials necessary...................
Tube = pipe = pipe bomb
Very sad but stupid on steroids. If I had been there I would have run like hell and told everyone else to do the same. Iron tubing for water is not cannon grade steel.
That would be a pipe bomb.
Even I know better, and I’m a freakin moron.
When my Brother was 12 he made a small cannon out of copper pipe and a 2X4. He used match heads as powder and just heated it with matches until it fired.
To my amazement, it worked. Too much trouble to fire very much tho.
‘we dumped shotgun powder in the tube.
Great. Fast burning smokeless powder in effectively a muzzleloading cannon. Dumb. Very dumb.
Reminds me of a short comedic story by the late Patrick F. McManus, entitled ‘Poof! No Eyebrows’. It’s a fictional story about young Pat’s experiments with gunpowder, along with his friend Retch Sweeney. His last experiment was doing exactly what these idiots did: make a homemade cannon. And it did exactly what this cannon did-it exploded. No one was killed in the story, though.
**it happens.
I once put a large bottle rocket of of which the stick had broken, fuse-downward into a PVC pipe.
It was loud when the PVC pipe disintegrated.
There was never any stick. It wasn’t a bottle rocket.
Live and learn — sometimes.
Obviously not qualified for even reenactment artillery. I owned an 1841 Heavy 12 pounder that fired three pounds of black powder per firing. We had several precautions before pulling the fuse or even loading after the first firing. I cringed and ran when I saw people showing up at reenactments with homemade cannon with a steel pipe at the core and fiberglass for the body.
I shudder to think of the match heads that I crammed in various “rockets” and lit them.
One of our favorite was filling a CO2 empty cartridge with matches. Those things took off like a bat out of hell and you had no idea where they would go. Little did I know that I was basically making pipe bombs and getting lucky that they fizzled out every time.
That and my motorcycle Evil Knievel days (cinder blocks under plywood ramps, and a prayer) are proof that God has a plan for me to live.
Yup, it has a welded seam in it. I think you can get seamless but it’s not common or cheap. They probably used schedule 40 too as it’s most common.
Another bottle rocket story.... We took all the sticks off a gross of little ones and crammed them into a coffee can around 3 am on Christmas morning in the middle of the road and poured gasoline on it and lit it up.
We sang Silent Night, at first, because the gasoline wasn’t enough to light them all at first, or at once.
I recall it took about 30 minutes until the last explosion.
Fortunately there was no traffic.
Dang! I want to party with you....!
Just make a potato cannon already.
Carbide cannon is a good one.
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