Golf ball cannon, almost as much fun as my handgonne

[The Miner '49er]

75 grains of FFg, no wad or patch, barrel at a 70° angle dropped the balls between the 50 and 100 yard frames, an average of 65 yard downrange. I counted about six to eight seconds of air time from launch to plop, so those 700 grain balls are really cruising. The vertical streak in the blue sky is the ball. This still was captured by playing back my camera video at 1/4 speed. Now if a person could hand-hold that mortar it would be as much fun as the handgonne.

 

[Rich44]

Good news! I was hoping you would get one. I am having fun with my baby one also. I shoot a 1200 grain steel ball and it makes a good thud also. If you were to patch I believe it would increase a lot with that amount of powder. Here are some numbers that you maybe achieving. And a height of 150 feet, wow! Good luck with your new mortar. By the way, nice shooting spot and great picture taking.

 

[The Miner '49er]

Thanks @Rich44, that's a pretty neat and interesting calculator. Thanks for the calculation. Two questions, how was the velocity of 105 fps determined, and do you have a link to input numbers in the calculator?

 

[Edm]

I bought a mortar off this board that I fire Red Bull sized cement rounds from. I use 140 grains of 2f and pack it with sandwich bread before I load the round. Pretty impressive. I fire the rounds on Boy Scout campout then have the scouts retrieve the round so I can do it again. Good exercise…

 

[The Miner '49er]

@Rich44 made an earlier interesting post about his pinball mortar. In that post he offered the link to the calculator he used to compute my shot. I figured out how to use it as he described, and it works very well.