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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."
...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."
First? Is it really a good idea to give an 11 year old a cannon. Even though you will tell him not to use it unsupervised eventually theres going to come a time where his friends say something like "cmon we will just shoot it once"...... and then before you know it they are invading a nearby neighborhood...
Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgment - Zemfram Cochrane
Though Daugherty said he is still stunned that he had to get clearance from the NSA for the archaic artillery piece
Why would he need clearance from the NSA?
Here I sit, all broken hearted.
Came to poop, but only farted.
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)
So we can only have stuff as long as the government doesn't find it threatening?
Oh, I see this guy's on the Union side. Maybe they're worried about him pointing it at Baltimore's civilians and making demands, as the Union army did.
My kid brother, the machinist, made a scale replica of the 24 pounder long guns on the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides). He didn't cast iron; he machined it from a solid piece of modern steel (so it was WAY stronger than the originals).
Then he made a scale carriage, machined (because it was so hard) from seasoned timbers from an old dock being disassembled.
It was 1/4 scale, as I recall. When fired using modern muzzle loader powder (and totally guessing at the charge), it shot a beercan filled with cement about a quarter mile :-)
He sold it eventually to a collector, but what a cannon that was!
This kid lives in Charleston. Why is he talking about shooting at rebels? What has the South come to? Where is the adult supervision?
just so there's no risk he turns into a girlie man.
Every boy needs to learn that you have to have a big cannon and wield it with authority should any dispute come up.
(Warning: Failure to recognize sarcasm is the eighth deadly sin, specially in a world of manly men.)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
'Any rebels charging up this hill would be in trouble with a cannon like this at the top,' Logan says
Anyone else have an image of Stormtroopers firing one of these, relieved that they finally have a better weapon than those blasters?
I've never gotten over the childhood trauma of seeing a naked child smelling of bacon fat running around in the woods in the middle of nowhere.
No one would believe me, they put me through years of therapy. I still cringe when I smell bacon.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
This is totally OT.
Not necessarily. It's just geared more towards history, or even engineering, nerds than computer nerds. I'm willing to bet any 11 year old kid who's a civil war buff gets picked on as much as the rest of us did in school. At least until he gets a 700lb cannon...
Here I sit, all broken hearted.
Came to poop, but only farted.
Daugherty said his son is very mature and would be able to handle the responsibility of owning a piece of artillery.
"He's a good kid. One thing about my son he has a great respect for guns and weapons, so he will not be firing this anytime soon without an adult present."
I'm sure that's all true. Unlike Mr. Daugherty, I actually do remember being 11 years old. I also remember not doing a very good job of thinking of the consequences of my actions. So we'll all wait for the day when 1 or 2 years from now when this "good kid" and his friends fire this cannon at other people or nearby property and cause damage that they are held accountable for.
That title should read "Dad Builds 700 Pound Cannon for Himself, Under The Cover of His Son's Birthday".
What a charming and delightful way to relive one of the darkest chapters in our nation's history. :P
Of course, there's been at least one successful revolution... google the battle of athens, tenn.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Wait until a cannonball punches through your roof into your living room and then get back to us.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I'm calling "bullshit" on the NSA bit. The NSA is a bunch of spys and technology geeks. They would have little interest in a Civil War-era black powder cannon. From the NSA web site "The NSA/CSS core missions are to protect U.S. national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information."[http://www.nsa.gov/about/mission/index.shtml]
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
"I want a thermonuclear device."
My wife's uncle builds and shoots them. Years ago, he competed with his cannon, in both round shot and rifled competitions, with self-cast balls and "bullets" (I forget the correct name for them). These days he just does it for fun.
You do have to be careful with them, though. Last year (2008) on the fourth of July, he took his small (2.5") cannon down to the city park like every year, to fire it as part of the city's early morning festivities. That went well, and on the way back he decided to stop off at my house and wake us all up, since my kids usually go down to the park. Unfortunately, he forgot to lower the tailgate of his pickup truck before touching off the powder. It blew an 8-inch hole through his tailgate. The cannon didn't have a projectile loaded, just gunpowder and a wad, but the force mangled his tailgate.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
'I've always been interested in the Civil War and cannons, so I thought it would be a good gift,'
Translation"
'I've always been interested in the Civil War and cannons, so I really got it for myself even though I won't know it until my son drops his interest in it.'
Technically, yes. There's nothing in the constitution that denies Bill Gates the right to own a nuclear weapon is there? Nothing even close. I suppose you can interpret the private ownership of WMDs to be unconstitutional because of their definition of mass-destruction, thus by their existence in private hands violating other citizen's right to liberty.
And now to nitpick; The Civil War was hardly a bitch-slapping. It was the single bloodiest event in US history, out classing (in sheer destruction) all other wars thus-far combined.
It could have fallen on either side at many different stages of the war. Had Davis pushed into Washington first-thing, it would have been over before it started (as DC was relatively undefended) Or had Lincoln's generals not been a bunch of screw-ups etc. And, of course, the almost million dead between direct conflict, starvation, disease etc again, a little more than a bitch slap.
Now, whiskey rebellion, fine, or even prior to that when Massachusetts or Maine threatened to secede, or Delaware considered joining the Confederacy, or (as in an above post, MD) those were mere bitch-slaps. Man, those whiskey rebellion dudes really were push-overs.
a troll from 1861
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is a really great episode of This American Life here: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=734 that is relevant to this story. Act 1 has Sarah Vowell (a liberal anti-gun person) whose father is a gunsmith who built his own cannon. She tells about going out with him to fire it for the first time.
Lighten up, Francis. Just because the cannon doesn't run Linux doesn't mean its not cool.
But still, imagine a cluster of these things.
Historically, Americans are just very distrustful of our government. That's why the founders had to put the 2nd Amendment in the Constitution to get the people to support it enough for ratification. It's also why it's hard to get stuff like government controlled healthcare passed here.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You mean that somewhere, someone has NOT taught their son to be a pansy, and fear anything that has any remote chance of hurting someone? Oh, the horror! The next thing you know, he'll let the kid have his own POCKET KNIFE, for crying out loud. Won't someone please... THINK OF THE CHILDREN????
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
BATFE itself is not rational. They've declared a shoe string a machine gun, they've declared double barrel shotguns machine guns, they've declared broken guns machine guns, they prohibit felons from buying .22lr derringers, but allow them to own .50cal muzzle loaded rifles. 90% of gun laws serve no practical purpose, but are knee-jerk reaction laws to show that a certain politician is "making America more safe" when election time comes around.
A while back I was working at a place that had both engineering and manufacturing, and I mostly hung out with the engineers but I worked on some of the manufacturing equipment so I met a lot of the manufacturing people. One guy looked like an 80's stoner, black jacket, long hair, bad teeth, you know the type. I'd never talked to him. One day, apropos of nothing, he walked up and handed me a thick sheaf of papers and said "I thought you'd enjoy this." It was plans for making a homebuilt mortar, similar in size to the cannon in TFA (but with a much less pretty and detailed carriage.) It was machined out of a piece of solid 6" thick steel stock. It's actually a pretty cool design, although my metal lathe can't manage something that big. But ever since, I've wondered if I have "CLOSET ANARCHIST" written on my forehead, that makes people who don't know me walk up and volunteer stuff like this, since this wasn't the only time that's happened.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Oh, come on now. Most 11 year olds have access to much more dangerous stuff. The Stove, the Parent's Prescription Pills, the Family Car. I know a girl, who at around 10 or 11, stole her parent's car. They even called the cops on her and she was arrested.
A cannon just seems dangerous, but mostly it's just a heavy piece of cast iron that sits there.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"General Grant, the Rebs have broken through our lines! What are we going to do?"
"Calm down, Colonel. Get the Beowulf Battery on line."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"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
http://www.pers-place.uklinux.net/tommyogtigern/flamethrower.gif
My UID is prime. Hah!
Anytime you need to get permission from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms for a Birthday present, you know it's going to be the best birthday ever.
If you don't understand what an awesome nerd accomplishment building your own Civil War cannon is ... you really don't have any business calling yourself a nerd.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I couldn't disagree with you more. There are plenty of gun nerds.
Also: What was the first thing you thought when you saw the article?
Chances are it involved having one of these yourself, firing it, or possibly analyzing it. If so, then this article did indeed interest you. I, for one, welcome my beowulf cluster of muzzle loading cannon overlords, possibly running Linux...
I hear that they're often loaded with a salt, and frequently used in bar fights.
Slavery is profoundly wrong and no action taken to promote or sustain it can be considered moral.
Succeeding or not succeeding is not essential moral issue. How else did the US or Texas come about if not for succession?
But the Civil War was only about states' rights insofar as that meant their right to join a new country when a president was elected from a newly formed abolitionist party who threatened to infringe on the state "right" of slavery.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
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
My father was part of the Revolutionary War Re-enactment Militia back in the 70's, and we used to raise merry Hell with our cannon. I can remember firing Quaker Oatmeal canisters full of sand (puff rounds) several hundred yards out to sea off Cooper's Beach in the Hamptons.
One time, they did a parade in Sag Harbor, but the village wouldn't let them fire the cannon. It was only a 2-pounder, but they still wouldn't let them fire it. They were afraid it would break the windows in some of the historic buildings, which admittedly, are several hundred years old. Well, they held off until the very end of the parade, then fired it anyway. No damage, scared the HELL out of the judges and the crowd loved it.
However, now the gun had to be cleaned.
Dad and Walter took it to the end of the pier and got ready to clean it, when dad noted that the bore was the exact same diameter as a "D" cell battery. Walter noted the same thing, and in a few minutes, they'd charged the cannon and rammed a D-cell down the bore.
Now...a cannon with just a wadding load makes a huge "BOOM" with a big cloud of smoke. Very showy, very flashy. The gun rocks back a little, and that's it.
However, a cannon with an actual round in it makes a sound not unlike a Howitzer from those old WWII movies. A kind of "PAH-WOOOM", followed by the sound of ripping canvas heading down range. The smoke cloud is much narrower, and oh yeah? The cannon jumped it's blocks and went flying down the pier like a scalded cat. Probably scared the bejabbers out of a few baymen that day.
Dad was already hopping in the truck, Walter was chasing after the cannon before it rolled off the pier, and they both threw it in the back and took off before the cops could come.
They cleaned it at home this time.
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