Shooting black powder cannons is an amazing hobby. You can take a bunch of doddering old farts and turn them into 15 year old kids in less time than it takes for the smoke to clear.

We are not offering any cannons for sale at this time. In fact I'd like to know if there is anyone who would accept liability for a consumer device that could throw a bowling ball a mile down range. However, you can build your own or have one built locally. Lathes were first built for boring mortars (giving the world the means of manufacturing the steam engine BTW). If you bore a hole in a chunk of steel and put a fuse hole in the other end you have yourself a cannon. Of course there's no gaurantee that the operator will survive, but I guess the devil's in the details. However, a little research in materials and you will find out how really crappy the materials were that cannons were made out of 200 years ago. I think I might be generous in saying that cast iron of that time period might have 10,000psi tensile strength. Now, if you look at photographs and drawings of those cannons that did survive firing and then build your cannon out of modern steel to the same material proportions, you will have an instrument that will last. I recently had a mill assay come in with some 4140 hot rolled steel and it listed tensile strength at 130,000 psi. I think that 4140 is used in rifle barrels. But that steel is readily available at steel yards everywhere.

 

The hole is the trick. First, a manual lathe. The bigger the better, with a bed at least twice the length of your bore. For a drill I use spade drills. They are available at MSC and Travers and I think they both have online catalogs. A spade drill needs to have an accurate starter spot machined in the end and you will have to build your own boring bar. There are commercial ones available but quite expensive. I built my own out of 4140 TGP. The spade needs force fed coolant right at the bit to cool the cutting edge and help remove chips. I milled a slot the whole length of the bar and pressed in copper tubing feeding it to the center next to the spade, open at the surface for the length of the bar and tubing connections at the end. The sump pump is an electric one used for draining basements, I think it's called "Big Gusher". The bar is mounted on the tool post with care to prevent the mount from twisting if you are using an "Aloris" style tool post. The bar is fed into the workpiece with the carriage feed.. For 1/8" fuse I drill a .156" (4mm) hole.

For small model cannons you can use regular twist drills. For a good finish on the bore use a pilot drill that is about 1/16" smaller than the finish drill.

The bowling ball mortar was made from 9-5/8" oilfield casing(Must be 8-3/4" inside diameter for the bowling ball). You might have to get on the phone to Texas or Louisiana to find it. If you are around an oilfield there is probably a bunch of it sitting in a junk yard. It's 4140 steel and seamless. A 1" thick plate is welded on one end and on the inside is a cup around 3" in diameter, welded to the back plate, that holds the powder.

click to enlarge

The dimensions on the following were just scaled from images I've found on the web. You can adjust the dimensions for your desired bored as long as you maintain the same proportions.

2 Inch Carronade. click for larger view

2" bore columbiad. click to enlarge

Siege Cannon - click to enlarge