Reeder Custom Guns - Todays gun safety video

https://imgur.com/gallery/FuEyVwL#Dz49kox

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My 3' 2.5" bore will shoot fire 15' straight up from the 1/4" touch hole. I watch it on video. The Mortar is what is dangerous, so I made an oak "blast fence" to help some at the 75 deg. angle you fire it.

For a "powder cartridge" firing a small cannon today you measure by volume into a plastic sandwich baggie. Fold it up like a small charcoal briquette. Then wrap it in a layer of tin foil. That becomes the cartridge. You typically sore them in segmented wooden chests to cut down on static electricity. To fire, after you insert it, then the projectile, you pierce the layers of plastic baggie and foil to insert a fuse end via touch hole. The tool is called a "prick", I use a piece of clothes hangar suitably bent to shape with the end sharpened. Also take care to have enough fuse to light well to the side of the touch hole so sparks or wind do not set the main charge off like that fellow had going on. You always pretend it could go off at any second, no sweeping body parts with muzzle or the touch hole.

Like I said it blows fire 10-15' straight up like a flame thrower not to mention the 3# ball running 800-1000 fps and 20'+ plume of flame from it.

I like my powder to stay in the paddock area, I carry one ctg. at at time. 700-1000 grs. Fg is bad enough to mess with anyway.

*Information summary; "The Complete Cannoner" Vol.1.

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I have a mortar similar to Scotty’s. I tip the barrel up dump (undisclosed amount) of BP cannon grade powder Then pound 2 tennis balls for wads. Top the whole thing with either a juice bottle filled with vegetable oil (makes a great flame) or I cut down an 8 ft tree limbs and all and pound it into the barrel ( yup most of the tree sticks out) with a maul. Lite the fuse and run behind my truck. The limbs on the tree come off from the blow by gasses and the trunk of the tree goes about 300 yards like a thrown football.

For all you idiots out there never use my approach. It’s definitely not safe as compared to Sir Boggs. I didn’t even know there was a proper way until I met Scotty.

Thanks for the lesson Scotty

I haven’t blown any fingers off YET but the darn thing is scary and powerful

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I was in a "cannon club" back in the mid 1980's and the fellows put out a quarterly newsletter. I can't believe I threw those away!!!

Anyway they got together and a fellow printed a book called "The Complete Cannoneer" (first edition 1971 106 pages) and I got a copy of the first print follow up "The More Complete Cannoneer" 1990 about the same pages. The books are sort of a rip as they contain lots of artillery drill stuff that did not interest me. Who does what, the order of the drill etc. I wanted "load data" and the science of the ballistics. As usual I am mostly on my own, but I'm used to it. They do provide some useful basic information. One ounce per inch of bore size of coarse granulation Black Powder. Loose tolerance around the projectile, no patch or seal! The slop should be a minimum 0.050" like a pea-shooter.

Lots of cool stuff but it's sure not for everyone. Loading and firing is one thing.....next about that projectile...

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We use to make a cannon with a 1 1/2 inch pipe inserted into a 2 inch pipe with a taped hole as the front sight using a bolt to tighten down onto the 1 1/2 inch pipe. This way you had added protection with two pipes. It had only one way to go, out the front or blow the cap off which it never did. The pipe was about 18 inches long.

The 1 1/2 inch pipe was threaded on the other end and capped with a hole in the cap for the fuse. Using a cherry bomb, just drop the D-cell down the pipe and you could hear air sucking as it when down. We may have used some paper for a wad before inserting the battery.

When fired, it went out of sight so who knows what the range could have been. We lived on the river and even Mike Fink was envious.

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. . . Mike's been gone for quite a while.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/12/15/mike-fink-has-sat-silent-northern-kent...

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I ate there right before it closed. I ate so much that when I got up on the bridge I threw up over the side and it landed in the boat transom. I left so fast I just kept throwing up as I was running and laughing.

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Mike Fink (also spelled Miche Phinck)[2][3][4] (c. 1770/1780 – c. 1823), called "king of the keelboaters", was a semi-legendary brawler and river boatman who exemplified the tough and hard-drinking men who ran keelboats up and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilVIRPubhyk

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Mile before the projectile could run into a house. So I limit my projectiles to odd shapes so they tumble in flight. I have shot glow sticks taped togeather, nerf balls soaked in gas. Diesel fuel, fireworks,gasoline, firewood, tennis balls, non dairy creamer, stuffed animals and my favorite my wife’s old bras and panties. That one cost me a guy on a genie lift to retrieve them from the trees.

Most of the ideas were a bust. Gas flashes to fast so I switched to vegetable oil. Fireworks never light they just blow to pieces. Stuffed animals turn to fluff. Panties made from cotton catch fire in the trees, made from nylon they turn to melted goo in the trees. Light sticks are fun at night but hard to find the next day. Firewood tumbles in flight so it’s easy to see. Small hard projectiles like cannon balls fly out of sight so they aren’t much fun.

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The barrel is about 3 ft long and it weighs about 70 lbs. It shoots a beer can filled with cement. So far it’s only been shot at the pond. Really big splash.

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