Shooting My Homemade Cannon

 Perhaps this is not the right place to post this, Perhaps this does not even belong on Permies but I just wanted to share this video of my homemade cannon. I have a lot of fun with it, but it has no practical purpose other than fun or maybe scaring the bagebies out of someone. As far as legality goes anyone can make a muzzle loader of any size and its perfectly legal in any state, as far as I know (check for yourself) but just use common sense and use very thick mild steel, do not use water pipe or anything of the sort and if you don't know what you are doing leave it alone.
 Anyway I hope you guys enjoy my video. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Our oldest son (who's 44 now), back in high school, built a carbide cannon.  He did not let us know what he was doing and took his Honda motorcycle to town and came back with a length of drain pipe, acting a little suspicious. He was the child that never got in trouble so who'd a thought? He actually got the idea from a BOOK...we did not have a computer back then.

He set it up at the back of our property, still without letting us know what he was doing....it shook our windows and the neighbors also.  We thought for sure someone would have called the sheriff's office to investigate.

The boys and their dad used to go caving a lot, so carbide was always around the house.

I'll send him your video....

Our old church had a "Beast Feast" which was a fellowship day for the men of church. People would bring their guns and do target practice. That was neat because a guy in church had a gun shop and brought some really fun guns to shoot...like legal, but fully-automatic rifles and stuff. One guy though, had his own cannon and would touch it off!

They are to be feared though. My father welded up one for a guy, but it went off too quick, and blew off his hand. That kind of sucked, but not as bad as having the ATF show up at his work and ask him about the incident.

The beast feast was fun though. For lunch people brought in exotic meat to eat, and it got pretty interesting. Porcupine, beaver tail, squirrel, turtle soup, etc....

Judith Browning That's a pretty good story and glad nothing bad happen, pretty funny too but they are not toys. A person can get seriously hurt or worse. Bet your boy got a surprise out of that too as loud as it was. If someone used modern gun powder instead of black powder it could and probably would blow up like a pipe bomb.I think carbide is just loud and not that powerful. I would research it before I messed with it too much though.
 I love caves and also have done a lot of caving. I have a small cave on my place and even have a video on it, My real man cave, lol
Thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed it and God bless.

Travis Johnson sounds like a pretty fun church. Yes they are very dangerous especially if you are not experienced and just plain don't know what you are doing. I should have shown it but I swab the barrel between shots with a damp cloth in case of a hot ember remaining. Not sure what you meant by it went off too quick but you do not want to be anywhere near that muzzle when it goes off or in line with the flash hole either. They need to be made out of good thick, strong mild steel, not cast iron unless very thick, Most civil war cannons were cast but very thick and even they blew up on occasion.
 Also I grew up eating those kind of varmints and they were pretty tasty, but now I'm convinced most are unclean and we should not eat them ( that my convictions) and I don't judge for there is only one judge. I never ate a porcupine though, but groundhogs, squirrels, rabbits and catfish were a staple.
 Thanks for watching and God bless.