Ideas for cannon ball extraction?

[olvvvoo]

Well, it will be difficult here, what kind of ball is that? For golf? Baseball?

 

[hosspuller]

Tools ... You'll need a powder measure, rammer and bore swab. Plus a bucket of water to extinguish the grass fire after the boom..

 

[2manyrocks]

I have read that there was a specific drill followed to fire a canon. One reenactor posted that he participated in a drill where they failed to swab the bore properly to extinguish all the sparks. The next charge ignited as someone was using the ram. That guy lost an arm.

 

[Richard]

Admission: I have no clue how to post a video. Never done it. I know how to take a video on the phone and/or a short video on my digital camera.

I can post pictures left/right...but I don't think you can upload a video to the site?

Ya, ya, ya.... I know....I can extract two cannon balls... I can take a 2x4 and create a slide hammer.....but I don't know how to post a video.

 

[MossRoad]

Admission: I have no clue how to post a video. Never done it. I know how to take a video on the phone and/or a short video on my digital camera.

I can post pictures left/right...but I don't think you can upload a video to the site?

Ya, ya, ya.... I know....I can extract two cannon balls... I can take a 2x4 and create a slide hammer.....but I don't know how to post a video.

YouTube is pretty easy to create an account and post videos to. I’ve done it to share things here on TBN before. Not too often, but it’s handy to have the option if desired.

In fact, here’s one I posted about 6 years ago. I hope your test firing of your cannon does not proceed this way. Good luck and happy 4th!

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

After having read the thread:

I probably would have, tapped the flash hole for a Zerk’s fitting and tried to pump the bore full of grease, to move the ball hydraulicly

I’d start with just wadding and light powder charges and work up. Really, you just want a loud bang and not a boom. So, I’d just stay with powder and wadding.

Modern powders, based on nitroglycerin, or nitrocellulose burn progressive, faster with more pressure. Black powder explodes, with a very small variation in burn rate, based mostly on the side of your granules. The smaller the faster. Black powder sued to come labeled as Black Powder, then BPF, ff, fff, ffff, all progressively finer ground.

On a cannon, I’d start with just straight black powder, or maybe the f, you have a fairly large charge, and if you put in a ball, a heavy charge. So a slower burn would be appropriate. (I could be completely off base on that, just thinking it through and trying to visualize the pressure curve, and forces.

 

[Jstpssng]

After having read the thread:

I probably would have, tapped the flash hole for a Zerk’s fitting and tried to pump the bore full of grease, to move the ball hydraulicly

I’d start with just wadding and light powder charges and work up. Really, you just want a loud bang and not a boom. So, I’d just stay with powder and wadding.

Modern powders, based on nitroglycerin, or nitrocellulose burn progressive, faster with more pressure. Black powder explodes, with a very small variation in burn rate, based mostly on the side of your granules. The smaller the faster. Black powder sued to come labeled as Black Powder, then BPF, ff, fff, ffff, all progressively finer ground.

On a cannon, I’d start with just straight black powder, or maybe the f, you have a fairly large charge, and if you put in a ball, a heavy charge. So a slower burn would be appropriate. (I could be completely off base on that, just thinking it through and trying to visualize the pressure curve, and forces.

That was suggested. I believe that the OP used the most obvious solution though.

 

[Richard]

I would have taken it to a machine shop and paid to have them extract it before I would have drilled into the cannon itself. The balls...well, are expendable and/or, can be resmelted back into shape (doubt I'll ever do that)

Also, there were gaps between the balls (both of them) and the bore so without me being a hydraulic expert, my logic said/says that any pressure that would have been applied like that would have ultimately, oozed past the balls, making a mess and still leaving me with stuck balls.

Though I really didn't want to drill them, I'm pretty satisfied that drilling the balls was the best answer. I was preparing to get a hole saw....trying to find one near the bore size, so I could drill a larger chunk of the ball. I found a bit. Was going to use it on the extension (that was already buried inside the ball)

In my efforts to extract the extension so I could use it for the larger hole saw, I was able to wood hammer (home made slide hammer) the ball out so never needed to try that angle.

 

[2manyrocks]

Where is the vicarious excitement in taking it to a machine shop?

You should print a copy of this thread to keep with the canon for future generations.

 

[Buggs67]

FWIW my fried who has a similar cannon; 2 1/8 bore and same look/carriage. He makes a small cup out of tin foil and puts in the powder (looks to be about 1/4 cup) and seals it into a small hockey puck shape. He puts this down the barrel and tamps it in place. Then he tamps in crumbled newspaper and uses a long piece of coathanger sharpened at one end to pierce the foil powder cartridge thru the fuse hole ad inserts the fuse til it bottoms out in the powder charge. And lights the fuse.

He did a gender reveal for his niece using a couple lbs of pink talcum powder.

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

So, we are all to be in suspense until tomorrow......

 

[Richard]

So, we are all to be in suspense until tomorrow......

There is no more (official) suspense....

I have some issues. I have a video on my phone. I'm trying to copy/move it to my PC (I'm MUCH better on PC than phone).

I can not find A.N.Y. pictures (or ...ahem....video's) at all on my phone, however, if I go to my phone, there they are.

I'm perplexed. I've always been able to plug my phone into PC jack and see/move pictures to my hard drive.....until now.

I really miss my old flip phone because with it, I never needed/wanted to upload anything.

I'll let some of the cat out of the bag. I put three ounces of powder down muzzle earlier today. Had my wife's cousin, his wife and her brother over to watch. Turns out I didn't seal the charge sufficiently and when it lit off, it was more like a giant sparkler with a lot of smoke.

I did however, have some more powder to try again but now, know to adjust my wad.

I'm trying to figure out how to get video's (oops, did I infer plural?) from my phone, to PC so I can upload to youtube.

Still trying to figure things out (especially why my PC won't find ANY pictures on my phone and I know they're there)

 

[2manyrocks]

Could be your phone is recording video in a file format that your pc doesn't recognize.

Maybe try VLC media player because it recognizes a wider variety of file formats. VLC media player

 

[Richard]

Not sure if I did it correctly..... but to cut to the chase, we finally had some BOOM today!

Fired cannon three times. Though it went off three times, the first one was a quasi dud since I didn't have the wadding in there tight enough. It was more like a giant sparkler.

This (if I'm doing this correctly) is the third attempt with the tightest wad of the three attempts AND the least powder (2 oz instead of 3 oz)