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...
Obviously they were ignorant of the pressures involved and the materials necessary...................
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.
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.
Just make a potato cannon already.
Democrats.
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?”.
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!
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