My first BP mortar

[tom_in_vt]

I cast a batch of these, remember too much powder and the ball is too hard to track. We would fire out into the ocean but could you imagine going to a golf course with your mortar and a putter

You cast that? Very nice!

 

[Commodore Swab]

You cast that? Very nice!

Ive cast more impressive bits

 

[M. De Land]

A friend made this for me many years ago. And, it is also bored for a golf ball. I attach a colored streamer, in this case, an orange strip of cloth via a drywall screw. Using 1F cannon powder, a bare ball gets launched and is found days, weeks, years later in the woods somewhere. But with the streamer, you can usually follow it down. We have a small cedar tree in the middle of the backyard which is next to the woods. Object is to drop the ball into the cedar. Elevation and wind are mainly the controlling factors. I use a 35mm film can for powder measure. It does go boom.

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Now that is just the right size mortar in my mind to have a lot of low cost fun with limitless projectiles. I really like the streamer idea as well.
My mortar weighs about 250 lbs and shoots bowling balls. I get about 14 shots to the lbs and if I can find the ball I get about four shots before it comes apart mid air from the tremendous shock and pressure of the lift charge. Flight time with a 500 grain charge of canon grade Goex is about 17 seconds and if you have good eyes you can track the ball through the whole flight. A 500 grain lift charge will range about 1/3rd of a mile so it's kind of hard to find enough room to shoot it unless over a lake or the ocean.
Mine is percussion ignition using musket caps and the carriage is a steel sled with 5/8s plate steel base bolted on top of two 3.5 inch x15 x36 inch long glue lam beams. The tube is 27 inches long and is elevated with a jack screw from 17 degrees to vertical.
It's a lot of fun for folks to watch but is a lot of work to load in the truck and then take apart and clean after words. The golf ball mortars are a lot more practical, economical and probably just as much fun to shoot.

 

[tom_in_vt]

Now that is just the right size mortar in my mind to have a lot of low cost fun with limitless projectiles. I really like the streamer idea as well.
My mortar weighs about 250 lbs and shoots bowling balls. I get about 14 shots to the lbs and if I can find the ball I get about four shots before it comes apart mid air from the tremendous shock and pressure of the lift charge. Flight time with a 500 grain charge of canon grade Goex is about 17 seconds and if you have good eyes you can track the ball through the whole flight. A 500 grain lift charge will range about 1/3rd of a mile so it's kind of hard to find enough room to shoot it unless over a lake or the ocean.
Mine is percussion ignition using musket caps and the carriage is a steel sled with 5/8s plate steel base bolted on top of two 3.5 inch x15 x36 inch long glue lam beams. The tube is 27 inches long and is elevated with a jack screw from 17 degrees to vertical.
It's a lot of fun for folks to watch but is a lot of work to load in the truck and then take apart and clean after words. The golf ball mortars are a lot more practical, economical and probably just as much fun to shoot.

More practical, yes. But they don’t have anywhere near the power! I really would like a big mortar, but as you said they are a pain to set up. That and the cost is usually prohibitive.

 

[M. De Land]

I have to admit the bowling ball mortar will draw a crowd where ever it is set up wither fired or not. I used to take it to our territorial matches each year and on Saturday night when we all gather for a pot luck I would shoot it out into a huge marsh area near Talkeetna Alaska on the Dog mushing track where we all gathered and camped for the four day match. Folks loved to gather around and watch it shoot while eating their food and fellowshiping with each other. It was a perfect way to end a fun filled day of muzzle loader shooting.
We moved to another range that did not have the space to shoot it and be able to watch the ball through the flight so I don't take it along any more.
The last time I fired it was two years ago at Victory Bible camp on their air strip up north near Sheep Mtn AK. The ball still cleared the air strip length and dropped in the woods behind. We told just a couple of folks we were going to shoot and when we got set up their was about 50 people gathered by word of mouth at the top end of the air strip behind us. They got a real kick out of the two or three balls sent up.
The balls whistle like crazy from the finger holes in them going up , making the turn and then arching down.
We do always have to check for any aircraft in the area before firing for obvious reasons.
The other thing I get a kick out of is occasionally hearing tales of hunters finding bowling balls out in the mud flats or tundra in the fall that are utterly perplexed at how they got there! They are inert and hurt nothing environmentally if not recovered often times burring themselves in the soft dirt where they land.

 

[PathfinderNC]

OK, you mortar guys really seem like crazy fun

 

[Treestalker]

OK, you mortar guys really seem like crazy fun

Thank you! (death from above).

 

[jdw276]

Ok, so go to a semi private golf course and ask to speak to the golf pro. Interview them to see if they have a par 5, 600 yds straightaway. Tell them you think you can drive the green but would like their assistance towards the end of the day. May make a small divot in the green but since you may hook a bit or slice it JUST a wee bit you do not need a tight fairway as you might get a little bit wild with the first one or two. You could even make a beverage bet to entice them to let you try. Get approval, ask for help getting your driver out of the car and watch the clubhouse empty and all of em will have a drink in at least one hand! Stand back and enjoy the faces. Or you can ask em if they ever have a shotgun start tournament. Wanna start one off with a cannon?

 

[M. De Land]

While at Victory Christian camp two years ago my daughter wanted me to try a water melon . I put a plywood disk and some buffer in to try and keep it together but it was turned into a smoothie anyway before clear of the muzzle by more than 20 feet. That got the folks going with excitement and laughter !

 

[Belleville]

We had a small mortar year's ago. To get some noise when shooting a blank, we wadded with green grass,

BTW, fuse firing is not a good idea, as you can't control when it will be going off, should something come up that you do not want to shoot, wanders in front of it. Linstock firing with priming powder in vent hole is also not real reliable. We use a cut down plastic beverage stirrer that will go down the touch hole (the one's from Burger King work good if they still carry them), cut narrow strips of double sided adhesive paper that will fit the hole in the stirrer, put the strip into 4Fg to pick it up. Then put strip in the stirrer so that some of strip sticks out the top end. Fire using a linstock, and matchlock fuse. This works well enough to keep up with CW langured pull fuses.

 

[simonbeans]

Here is my little golf ball shooting mortar. I am not sure if it was fired with the streamer as I had posted earlier.

As to the above comment on firing with a fuse: I suppose that there might be a bit of concern with the fuse as to controlling the rate of burn to firing, however, when firing any sort of arm, be it cannon or bow and arrow, the shooter must always be aware of the conditions, including any possible "wandering in front of it". Maybe that is why most of the time when any spectators are near, the command "FIRE IN THE HOLE" is given.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Beautiful. I'm envious.

 

[toot]

a real beauty. gotta luve it.

 

[M. De Land]

We had a small mortar year's ago. To get some noise when shooting a blank, we wadded with green grass,

BTW, fuse firing is not a good idea, as you can't control when it will be going off, should something come up that you do not want to shoot, wanders in front of it. Linstock firing with priming powder in vent hole is also not real reliable. We use a cut down plastic beverage stirrer that will go down the touch hole (the one's from Burger King work good if they still carry them), cut narrow strips of double sided adhesive paper that will fit the hole in the stirrer, put the strip into 4Fg to pick it up. Then put strip in the stirrer so that some of strip sticks out the top end. Fire using a linstock, and matchlock fuse. This works well enough to keep up with CW langured pull fuses.

I started making cannons as a teenager in HS shop class. I drilled a 1 inch bore ,10 inches long in a 2inch diameter piece of cold rolled steel round. I shot spark plugs wrapped in news paper for wadding for a projectile. I had no money for fuse in those days so used cut open shotgun shell powder poured in a line up the barrel. It burns slow enough for you to get clear of the cannon before discharge.
I remember one day, I think on the 4th of July, I was shooting it in our lawn out on the farm and we had not cut the grass in awhile. The grass was about 3 inches high and I generally propped up the muzzle on a bit of 2x4 for elevation and left the breech against the dirt.
Well just as I lit the shot gun powder and made a dash to get clear my mom puts here pure white cat (Charley Brown) was his name, out on the back step.
Charley sees the fuse powder spitting up in the air out of the grass and thinks its some kind of varmint and makes a mad dash to attack it. Well I'm screaming and yelling to get the cat away from the about fire cannon and the dumb bell runs out ahead of the muzzle and starts screwing his feet down laying flat on his bell in the grass, to make the pounce. He was about three feet ahead of the muzzle. No amount of screaming and yelling and throwing things was going to dis-wade Charley from his attack.
Well , bahroooooooooooom the cannon goes and the blast mowed all the grass down in and around Charley in a fan shaped pattern and I was sure Moms cat was no more. When the smoke clears here Charley is still in his attack pose with a blackened face, whiskers burned off and all the grass around him smoldering.
The blast must have knocked him cold as a mackerel as he did not stir for about 10-15 seconds and I was sure he was stone dead. Finally he begins to stir a bit , gets his whits back and takes off like a streak for the weeds. Boy I was glad to see that cat moving again though I think he was probably stone deaf from that day on. True story I can still see as if it happened yesterday ! I can still hear poor Mom screaming "You Killed my Cat"!
I think the roar of that varmint impressed Charley !

 

[Captndan]

That could have easily been Donald. He stalks everything.

 

[M. De Land]

Well, it sure was a good thing Charley did not execute his pounce a fraction of a second sooner or he surely would have been killed. I think the fact that he was flat on his belly, in the high grass and the cannon muzzle being elevated that enough of the shock wave and blast cleared him to preserve his life.
I'm amazed he had any eyes left and I think that was also because the grass was shielding him partially. HIs face and whisker sure took a beating though as they were burned coal black when he came to and headed for the weeds.

 

[steam1993]

Something like this is as close to golf as I would ever get! Let’s call it redneck golf, yes we golf with cannons!

Near me there is a golf course called Cannon golf course. But they would not let me play when i took a cannon and asked when would be my tee time.