Reinforcing: Leather case to carry a motorcycle battery

[Cattleman]

A older gentleman I know told me a story about building a cannon when he was a teenager. It was built to fire 6oz soda cans filled with cement. Once the barrel was done he wanted to "Proof" it by loading it with an inordinately large charge. He poured a double handful of black powder down the barrel followed by a cement can. The barrel was not yet mounted to a carrage, so he propped it over a small dirt burm and placed 3 heavy haybales on top of the barrel. He aimed for the base of a HUGE cottonwood tree about 1/4 mile a way with nothing behind it. Lit a 30 second fuse and hid behind the barn. The barrel performed excellently... But the 3 haybales were not enough to keep the barrel down... When it went off everything went flying. He quickly cleaned up the mess and put it all away before he got into trouble.

 

Several miles away lived a Japanese-American couple... He had served in WWII... The cement can came down almost vertical through the roof and wall, striking just inside the edge of the concrete slab floor, ricocheted through a chest of drawers, another wall, cut a solid wood door in half horizontally, destroyed a large antique China doll and came to rest in a stud of the opposite exterior wall. The cement can still had burning powder stuck to the bottom and thus had ignited the clothing in the chest of drawers.. The house was filling with smoke. The gentleman told police that it sounded just like artillery impacts he had survived in the war, and that he had reacted as if it was... "INCOMING!!!"  and hit the deck.

No one was injured, and the couple knew the kid who had accidently "Shelled" thier house... No charges were pressed, but the sheriff confiscated the barrel. The kids father made him work off the damages by helping on the couple's farm for free the rest of the year.

That story can still be heard occasionally among older folk from around the area in the local coffee shops. The kid that was responsible is now about 75 years old, he personally related this story to me about 10 years ago... I never laughed so hard in my life, he is a very animated, charismatic fellow... He has since built 4 other cannons.

[fredk]

[Burkhardt]

12 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

lol do you remember being able to buy m80's and cherry bombs at the fireworks stand as a kid? our mortar was a piece of pipe buried about two feet into the ground with a pop can full of sand as the ammo, we would drop in the m80 then the can then run like heck because the pipe was pretty much straight up.

Can you imagine the news stories about the idiotic society we live in now that would be losing body parts.

[Littlef]

20 hours ago, Cattleman said:

A older gentleman I know told me a story about building a cannon when he was a teenager. It was built to fire 6oz soda cans filled with cement. Once the barrel was done he wanted to "Proof" it by loading it with an inordinately large charge. He poured a double handful of black powder down the barrel followed by a cement can. The barrel was not yet mounted to a carriage, so he propped it over a small dirt berm and placed 3 heavy haybales on top of the barrel. He aimed for the base of a HUGE cottonwood tree about 1/4 mile away with nothing behind it. Lit a 30 second fuse and hid behind the barn. The barrel performed excellently... But the 3 haybales were not enough to keep the barrel down... When it went off everything went flying. He quickly cleaned up the mess and put it all away before he got into trouble.

 

Several miles away lived a Japanese-American couple... He had served in WWII... The cement can came down almost vertical through the roof and wall, striking just inside the edge of the concrete slab floor, ricocheted through a chest of drawers, another wall, cut a solid wood door in half horizontally, destroyed a large antique China doll and came to rest in a stud of the opposite exterior wall. The cement can still had burning powder stuck to the bottom and thus had ignited the clothing in the chest of drawers.. The house was filling with smoke. The gentleman told police that it sounded just like artillery impacts he had survived in the war, and that he had reacted as if it was... "INCOMING!!!"  and hit the deck.

No one was injured, and the couple knew the kid who had accidently "Shelled" their house... No charges were pressed, but the sheriff confiscated the barrel. The kids father made him work off the damages by helping on the couple's farm for free the rest of the year.

That story can still be heard occasionally among older folk from around the area in the local coffee shops. The kid that was responsible is now about 75 years old, he personally related this story to me about 10 years ago... I never laughed so hard in my life, he is a very animated, charismatic fellow... He has since built 4 other cannons.

As with any well-crafted tale, they tend to take on a bit of exaggeration over time.  But it does illustrate the importance of understanding the equipment you are using, and approaching it with a degree of respect.  In this same area where I go, someone constructed a bowling ball canon, loaded it up with a large black powder charge.  The bowling ball came down a few miles away.  It went through the roof of a barn and killed a cow.  That guy went to jail.

 

The machinist who turned the barrel for this mortar, had been making them for several years.  With several years of development, he determined the max charge should be 200grains.  I'm operating at just under half of that.  I'm dropping these within a couple hundred yards, in an area with a clear line of sight.  I mark the location of each one with a flag so I can see the distribution as I'm shooting.  I also plot each one in my GPS, so I'm compiling more data after each trip.  My goal is to be able to drop a can right where I want it to land, versus just trying to put cans into orbit.  I think it makes for a much more interesting meaningful session.  

 

I picked up some hardware from Tandy yesterday, and made some revisions to my preliminary leather pattern last night.  Hopefully this evening I'll start cutting leather for the battery case.