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 ...
When I was in elementary school a classmate blew a hole in his heart doing exactly that.
Democrats.
yeah. When I was that age we made a mortar. We made our own gunpowder from saltpeter(potassium nitrate) and flowers of sulfur we bought at the drug store. The carbon was crushed coal from my basement. Somewhere I learned the formula for gun powder and we had to try it. Eventually you couldn’t buy either saltpeter or suffer at the drug store anymore. This was in inner city Chicago by the way.
Cannons aren’t a toy you can just build out of a pipe! They are specifically engineered to work without exploding!
There but for the grace of God ...
Similar events are on my list of “Why Am I Still Alive?”.
“I shudder to think of the match heads that I crammed in various rockets and lit them.”
I lined the bottom of my grandpa’s pipe with match heads and tobacco on top and sat by him as he smoked it. Eventually a flame about a foot high and an ejection of ashes. He wasn’t happy.
I won't say for sure but I've heard, that you can take a model rocket engine, pry out the clay buffer and the top will become an ignition source when it attempts to deploy the parachute at the end of it's trip. Rumor has it that a couple of adult delinquents back in the 80's used to fill those model rockets with black powder for fairly respectable boom and a lotta smoke at the end of the trip.
Or so I hear, anyways.. d;^)
Smokeless "fast" shotgun powder inna home-made cannon? Here's your sign (and here's YOUR tombstone, Mr Casperson).
Epitaph: Hold muh beer and watch this...
Darwin in action.
Why use that much effort? Just buy the first stage engines used for a multi-stage rocket. There is no buffer at the top but a small hole to let the flame burn upward to ignite the second stage engine.
Instead of another engine/stage just fill the top of the rocket with black powder. It works very well.
First Stage of multi Stage Rocket,,,
Oh Boy!
My buddy and I made a tennis ball cannon once while at work and bored out of our minds (ski lift maintenance during season and just waiting around for something to break down!).
Used a 2 1/2” dia. x 36” rigid pipe set at 30 degrees (or something like that). Welded bottom end shut with 1/4” plate and drilled a 3/8” dia. hole 6” up from the bottom for ignition. Insert tennis ball and fill with acetylene gas. Light up with a stick welder rod.
Well this thing shot that tennis ball about 300 yards onto the top of a 5 story condo building. The flame out the front was about 10 feet long. A smoking ball went flying through the air and no one noticed.
Needless to say we packed that thing up so fast and both walked different directions away from the shop. No repercussions.
Whew!
Project number 2,
Thanks!
IF the tyro cannon-makers had used black powder, they likely would have been fine if using 1/2” wall quality steel pipe.
(A smoothbore seamless high-quality steel tube, with 3/8-1/2 walls works well for building PUNT GUNS, which are essentially small-bore cannons that were once used for commercial waterfowl hunting.)
Note: I once, about 25 years ago, helped design a Punt Gun & gunning skiff for a marine museum display. - Had the museum’s directors & the federal laws allowed it, I feel sure that the Punt Gun would have worked as well as similar commercial hunting guns worked in the 19th Century for taking ducks & geese.
(Some of the old-school Punt Guns fired 6-8 ounces of black powder & up to 2 pounds of shot, nails, screws or other similar “projectiles” for each firing.)
Otoh, as several people said, smokeless powder in such a homebrew cannon is completely dangerous, likely LETHAL & therefore a smokeless cannon must be made MUCH stronger than a black powder cannon of the same bore size.
Comment: The “Walton” (Punt Guns were traditionally named after the family that first owned them.), was a 1.5” bore Big Gun with a barrel 7 feet in length, which was mounted on the forward portion of a a 20-foot sailing skiff.
During the 40+ years that it was used for market hunting, that single Big Gun is estimated to have killed about a HALF-MILLON ducks/geese. - Commercial market hunting HAD to be outlawed lest there be no waterfowl left alive in another decade, according to the best estimates of the USFWS.
Yours, TMN78247
Fwiw, the amateur cannoneers will likely NOT BE CONVICTED at trial, as they seem to have had NO “specific criminal intent” to commit a felony crime.
(The only lawful convictions for acts that involve only a “general intent” are DWI, DUID & Possession of Unlawful Drugs.)
Yours, TMN78247
You should’ve filled the tennis ball with water..... More range
I think cannon that “went all pipe bomb-y” would be more apt - obviously didn’t use barrel-grade pipe ...but the end wasn’t purposely sealed like a pipe bomb...
Made a few myself when younger and into making my own black powder...it’s what teens do...but this guy should have outgrown it...or killed himself with stupidity before now.
I was using some Indian fireworks back in the day. There was a picture on the side of a sparkler showing the firework stuck in the top of a bottle showering sparks, with Hindi writing underneath. I didnt read Hindi, but I figured the picture was clear enough.
Well, needless to say, everything was going fine until the firework shot down into the bottle and exploded, shedding everything nearby, including my leg.
As he was patching me up, I showed another of the sparklers to Cook, with the picture, to explain how it wasnt my fault. He pointed to the Hindi writing underneath the picture and told me it said DO NOT DO THIS!
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