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Dad Builds 700 Pound Cannon for Son's Birthday
Hugh Pickens writes "The Charleston Daily Mail reports that machinist Mike Daugherty built his son a working cannon for his birthday — not a model — a real working cannon. 'It looks like something right out of the battle at Gettysburg,' says Daugherty. The 700 pound cast iron and steel howitzer, designed to use comparatively small explosive charges to propel projectiles at relatively high trajectories with a steep angle of descent, has a 4-inch gun barrel that is 36 inches long mounted on a wooden gun carriage with two 36- inch diameter wheels and took Daugherty about two weeks to build at a cost of about $6,000. 'I've always been interested in the Civil War and cannons, so I thought it would be a good gift,' says Daugherty's 11-year old son Logan. Daugherty said he is not worried about the federal government coming to get his son's cannon because he spoke to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and found it is legal to own such a cannon because it does not use a firing pin and is muzzle loaded so the government does not consider the weapon a threat. Two days after the family celebrated Logan's 11th birthday, father and son offered a field demonstration of the new cannon on top of a grassy hill overlooking Fairmont, West Virginia and on the third try, the blank inside the barrel went boom and a cannon was born. For a followup they popped a golf ball into the gun barrel, lit the fuse, and watched the golf ball split the sky and land about 600 yards away. 'Any rebels charging up this hill would be in trouble with a cannon like this at the top,' Logan says."
The article didn't say it cost $6000, but that it would be worth that. It would be hard to spend $6000 in materials for a Civil war era cannon that you build yourself.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
You get about one shot every 2 minutes if you have four guys that know what they are doing, and you burn more than $10 worth of powder for ever shot. And the things are heavy. They will not get far.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Cannons don't kill people. (Unless they run them over). Gunpowder and cannonballs kill people. Just don't let the son get ahold of the gunpowder and he'll be safe. The article doesn't say that he built any cannonballs at all, and you can't just buy them at your local Walmart.
Just because you dont have cannonball doesnt mean you wont put anything vaguely round into the cannon to see if it will shoot. I know I would have done that if I had a cannon growing up.
Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgment - Zemfram Cochrane
The West Virginians saw the Secession for what the sham it was; protecting the property (slave holding) rights of the rich tidewater plantation owners while forcing the poor (the working class and dirt farmers) to fight for them. The south had the draft before the North. After Bull Run, the militias were effectively drafted for the duration. Unless you were a rich plantation owner in which case you were considered too important for the economy and released from service.
The West Virginians being dirt farmers themselves, and a bit ornery, seceded from Virginia and joined the Union as their own state in 1863.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I can assure you Baltimore is not a state.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
...it is legal to own such a cannon because it does not use a firing pin and is muzzle loaded so the government does not consider the weapon a threat.
He then continued to say, "Also, I use it to hunt deer."
An interesting thought.... would this "gun" qualify for the muzzle-loading hunt? Due to the higher degree of difficulty in shooting with archaic guns and more limited range, several U.S. states offer special licenses for those hunters who hunt with a muzzle loading gun that often has extended dates and additional locations where you can hunt with those kind of guns.
Seems a tad bit overkill, but wouldn't it be a sight to see on the opening day of the hunt?
Did you know that tailgates for many late model trucks are made of fiberglass?
I didn't.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
"But still, imagine a cluster of these things."
Why imagine it - there are plenty of movies with them.
Although with cannon, it's called a "battery".
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Yeah, Steel is the way to go.
My uncle made a cannon for fun (he works in a metal shop) that we took to the local shooting range. They had some wooden spools setup for targets, but the lead balls we fired at them made a neat hole through them and embedded in the gravel hill behind. I can only imagine how far it would have gone had we aimed it higher.
Go read the Federalist Papers dimwit. You know, there are tons of resources that encompass the founding of this nation that aren't written into The Constitution.
What you're doing is akin to claiming that anything about Judaism and Christianity is written in the 10 commandments.
A trebuchet.
More like Roosevelt and the 1934 National Firearms Act - it was the start of "You can't have weapons that the police have."
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
High proof rubbing or cleaning alcohol sold in American drug stores won't work because there is a deliberate retardant added to spoil its value as an explosive. Perhaps a good thing, but if you need to make one of these weapons you should use some old fashioned moonshine or something home-made.
Easy solution: "Klean-Strip S-L-X Denatured Alcohol" widely available at home improvement and paint supply stores in pints and gallons. I use it as a shellac thinner when finishing the tweed covering on vintage-style guitar amplifiers I build.
As for black powder, I used to make the stuff based on a recipe from the World Book Encyclopedia. The Salt Pieter I purchased from a local drug store (it is a heart medication that is now off the shelves due to ATF concerns) and for the carbon I used Kingsford briquettes. Sulfur came from the home chemistry set and I found other sources after my initial experiments.
There are many ways to skin this boom-cat without requiring one to obtain substances that are heavily-restricted.
"Explosives and Propellants from Commonly Available Materials": http://thedisease.net/functions.php?PHPSESSID=04dba15555551856435582268479ee3c&arcanum=explosives/Common_Materials.pdf
"CIA Field Expedient Methods for Explosives Preparations": http://thedisease.net/functions.php?PHPSESSID=04dba15555551856435582268479ee3c&arcanum=explosives/CIA_FEMFEP.pdf
"Composite Rocket Fuels": http://thedisease.net/functions.php?PHPSESSID=04dba15555551856435582268479ee3c&arcanum=explosives/Composite_Rocket_Fuels.pdf
"Deadly Brew-Advanced Improvised Explosives": http://thedisease.net/functions.php?PHPSESSID=04dba15555551856435582268479ee3c&arcanum=explosives/Deadly_Brew.zip
"Guide to Homemade Detonators": http://thedisease.net/functions.php?PHPSESSID=04dba15555551856435582268479ee3c&arcanum=explosives/Ragnars_Detonators.pdf
"Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives and Homemade C-4": http://thedisease.net/functions.php?PHPSESSID=04dba15555551856435582268479ee3c&arcanum=explosives/HARUOHE.zip
"Home Workshop Explosives": http://thedisease.net/functions.php?PHPSESSID=04dba15555551856435582268479ee3c&arcanum=explosives/Home_Workshop_Explosives.zip
"Improvised Explosives: How to Make Your Own": http://thedisease.net/functions.php?PHPSESSID=04dba15555551856435582268479ee3c&arcanum=explosives/Improvised_Explosives_Lecker.zip
Much more here: http://thedisease.net/?ejaculate=library&your_poison=Explosives
This stuff is highly dangerous. Don't blame me if you put somebodies' (or your own) eye out, or earn the nickname "Stumpy"!
There's just no possible way for any government to stop anyone from making something that goes "boom" by restricting or banning anything that *can* be made/combined to go "boom". It's an even more stupid and self-defeat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I'm willing to bet it's a typo for NFA, or National Firearms Act, which is the purview of the Convenience Store (aka BATFE). It classifies stuff as firearms and "destructive devices".
What's miserable is that the default stance on anything that remotely goes "Bang" is "Sorry, that's not allowed.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
"What weapon do the police have that you can't?"
Fully automatic machine guns and carbines.
Rifles and shotguns with barrels or overall length below a certain amount.
Magazines that hold more than X cartridges, depending on the state.
Tasers and pepper spray, again depending on the state.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
So if the local police have fully automatic M4 carbines, I should be afforded that same right, to the limit of my pocketbook.
For the most part you can own a fully automatic M4 carbine. Civilians with the appropriate tax stamp (essentially a $300 fee to the BATF) can own a fully automatic weapon so long as it was made prior to 1986. Thing is the government really considers a specific part to be the gun - usually the receiver, but you can also get a registered fully auto sear for an M16/AR15 as well. If you pay the stamp for it (and the going price of about $8k to $10k for the part) then you can install it in an otherwise brand new AR15 carbine and have a select fire machine gun - it's just expensive. For older guns if you have a registered receiver then the 1986 law only applies to it. You can have a gunsmith or machinist remake and outfit the entire gun with new parts as long as the receiver is still intact, and you're good and legal.
You see that often with government regs where some simple part is legally the item. Airplanes are much the same. The registration plate for example is considered an airplane, so you'll see people paying thousands of dollars for an original Piper J3 Cub's plate alone, simply because it's not too hard to rebuild one of those old planes from scratch, but getting it registered as anything but an experimental is hard with a homebuilt plane. Attach that nameplate to your replica though and now it's legally considered to be the same old plane that the plate came from.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
A few corrections:
.500 caliber; again shotguns are excluded. This is because there is no real definition of rifle caliber versus pistol caliber. I have a handgun chambered in .308 Winchester, for example.
;-)
1. You can build 1 firearm PER YEAR without a manufacturers license. Any more than that and you need the proper license and permits.
2. The bit about the rifle cartridges is incorrect. The only firearms considered destructive devices are those over
3. The legal barrel length, federally, for a rifle is 16", not 16.5". Most manufacturers leave about 1/8" more just to be safe. There is also a short barreled shotgun stamp; the barrel length requirement for shotguns is 18".
In addition, the only "permission" required for a SBR is the tax stamp. You can build one yourself. You just have to get the SBR stamp before assembly, or in some cases even acquiring the barrel. One example of the second case is the AR-15 platform. If you have a barrel under 16" you either must have a pistol receiver or a receiver registered as a SBR.
Fixed that for you.