Posted on 02/08/2021 6:24:34 AM PST by artichokegrower
A Michigan couple tied balloons to the mailbox and set out a chalkboard with a hand-drawn sign announcing their baby shower on Saturday. To mark the occasion, the expectant parents in Gaines Township, Mich., fired a celebratory cannon as the small party stood outside in the snow in the backyard.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The cannon the homeowner fired was similar to a Signal Cannon, more commonly used as a novelty item. Police said the homeowner bought the cannon at an auction prior to the event and had fired the cannon several times before.
"The cannon is designed to create a big flash, a loud noise and create smoke," Michigan State Police said in a news release. "The cannon did not contain any projectiles, but it is suspected that the gun powder loaded into the device caused the cannon to fracture, resulting in shrapnel being spread in the area."
In Michigan, not a problem if you know the right people.
Oh yes! Another possibility! Brass and other metals get brittle when they get cold!..............
1) It's cold in Michigan right now (ask me how I know...) and cast iron gets brittle in the cold, and
2) Since it was a baby shower, maybe they tried to use the cannon as a gender reveal and crammed the barrel full of blue or pink chalk dust, creating a pipe bomb. (Total speculation on my part...)
The Michigan family was not attempting a gender-reveal stunt, police said, but the incident mirrored similar ill-fated events that have turned deadly and even started devastating wildfires.
Well, so much for my #2....
if there is no cannonball to shoot, why would the cannon explode? Wouldn’t the cannon need an obstruction holding the powder to keep it from blowing out?
Saw one of those at the Acropolis in Athens, a cannon blown in half with the ball stuck in place.
Many years ago, I used to make a crude form of black powder, for noisemaking on the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve (or whenever I felt like it, truth be told). It’s pretty easy.
And yes, I got hold of some smokeless shotgun powder once, and disintegrated my noisemaking device.
It’s recommended weapons such as cannons be inspected before and after use. What seems like a safe.charge could potentially be too hot and with time metal will crack then shatter suddenly.
This is very sad. Explosives are not toys, and the destructive capability of such requires extreme care and respect, and is best avoided altogether. It is interesting that there was an episode of Columbo (”By Dawn’s Early Light”) based on this exact premise, where a ceremonial cannon is secretly loaded with a more powerful explosive than usual, so the cannon explodes, killing the intended victim in an apparent ‘accident.’
The human eye can see about 7 million colors.
That’s a lot of different genders to reveal.
a “gender reveal” party.
Must be a boy.
At the end of the article...somebody “accidentally” built a pipe bomb...and killed grandma.
“In Iowa, a family accidentally built a pipe bomb in an attempt to set off a blue-or-pink flash. When the bomb exploded, a piece of shrapnel struck the baby’s grandmother, instantly killing her.”
My college fraternity had a cannon. Big enough to be mounted on wagon wheels. We fired it on special occasions. Of course, we were careful about how much powder was used. The cannon was made by an alumni who used oilfield casing pipe for the barrel. Usually, it was just powder but a small, what we called ‘baby coors, can fit the bore perfectly. We’d get about 100 yards in range across a very large, empty parking lot.
Depends on the material, propellant used and amount, etc.
Unless there is a visual crack or stress, I'd guess it's hard to tell defective gunmetal without ultrasonic or radiographic inspection.
Also, the material used as the reveal may have been jammed in hard, or blocked the barrel somewhat. Any resistance at all would have increased the barrel pressure - that is why shotguns blow up sometimes when water gets into the barrel.
Well, yeah. Check for cracks, splits, and deformation in the metal. Even a hairline can be a problem as you don’t know how deep it goes.
Was it a real canon or a carbide canon as advertised years ago in the back of magazines?
The gunpowder is supposed to explode. So that's not what went wrong.
I’m really glad you all survived that stunt with the old Spanish American war cannon, and I can relate to your sense of relief that you’re still around to tell the story, because I’ve said more than one prayer thanking God for saving me from myself :-)
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