See what happens when the boss goes to Las Vegas?



It's 3 inch bore and shoots dog food cans filled with concrete.



Here's my powder measure, graduated from 1 to 10 in .25 ounce increments.

Will you sell that to me so I can mount it on the hood of my car?

Very Nice!!!

Sweeet.
I've been thinking of upgrading from the hairspray/poatato set-ups. Care to share any construction details?? I'm debating on an aluminum, propane fired launcher.

Fuzzbean, that is truly a work of art. What is the range?
coyote3

Cool what's the damage on the far end look like?

Here's a picture of the breech end:



The tube is 1026 steel with 1 inch thick walls, and I'd guess weighs at least 80 pounds complete. I bored it out (from 3 inches) to 3.25 inches for 1 inch deep at the breech end. The plug is a 2 inch long chunk of 3 inch diameter 1018 cold-rolled that I turned something like the shape of a semi-wadcutter revolver bullet: full diameter for 1 inch, then stepped down to 2.75 inches and tapering down to about 2 inches or so diameter at the end. I pounded the plug in flush with the "pointed" end out; that gave a space a minimum .25 inch wide to weld into all around the plug. I had a good welder go in there with a heavy wire welder that used both shielding gas and flux-cored wire, using plenty of amperage and chipping the slag out after each pass. The whole end was changing colors and would have been red hot by the time he finished except he let it cool some.

Then I faced the end clean and made the trunnion piece out of 2.5 inch diameter 1018. It's turned to 2 inch diameter at each end, and I milled a flat about 1.5 inches wide where it fits against the barrel end. I had that welded on, along with the bracket near the muzzle. So the breech is welded 1 inch deep plus both plug and tube are welded to the trunnion bar.

The base is pretty poorly designed and cracked when I fired what I consider to be a safe maximum load -- 2.5 ounces of Fg blackpowder. Such a load keeps that heavy can up there for about 18 seconds, and it really whizzes as it comes back down. I'm not sure of the range as they shoot out of my field and I never could find where they hit out in the woods. I'd guess 300 or 400 yards at that high angle. What surprizes me is how .25 ounce will send the can hundreds of feet up and about 130 to 145 yards horizontally. People put more powder than that into .50 in-lines nowadays. Those loads sink the cans about flush into the ground, but they are not whistling noticeably as they come down.

Very nice!

I just saw something like this on that "Junkyard Wars" show on TV my son watches all the time.  Yours would have ruled the competition, hands down.  You should get a solid billet of unobtainium to machine a new base.  Maybe a trick T&E mechanism.  Damn, I think I may just sell my lathe and buy a bigger one!

And I thought Tony at Tromix was nuts!

This sets a whole new standard. Now I'll REALLY be impressed when you mount it on an AR lower - REALLY impressed!

Tony - does this give your sick and twisted mind any ideas?

Paul: i bet its illegal in Califoria some way or another isnt it?

How about a nice pneumatic recoil absorbtion system? Something like that could be deadly accurate added to some sort of fire control system, Cool

Thanks for all the complimentary remarks.

I actually made this about 5 years ago when the boss was away. Not on company time, but using shop equipment and scrap material. The shop foreman, who did all the welding, said "We can never tell the boss about this!" but now I get the impression everybody in the office knows about it anyway and it wasn't me that told them.

TREETOP, it's ignited by fuse. You can see the fuse hole in the picture of the breech.

This 3 inch bore is really great. The cans slide in with just the right clearance. I've heard of making cannons or launchers for pop cans, 2 5/8 inch bore I think, but the pop cans fit a little too snug in the tubing that size for practical use with blackpowder.

A fuc*ing mortar? Thats fricken cool!!! Although the welding looks shitty, I give the project an A+.

Prophet, Shooter;

I'm not sure about the details, but the Junkyard Wars production staff had to get some kind of special permit from the CA DOJ since the cannons qualified as "destructive devices" or something like that.  The DOJ actually had an agent on the set to inspect and sign off on the final products created by the teams.  After the filming, he then verified that the staff rendered the cannons unusable (filled with concrete) since they recycle the parts back to the junkyard.