Big Blast! Thought you folks would enjoy this!

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
There goes my powder supply.....

An original howitzer. Damn
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
You think that is cool! A few year later he brought up one of the two original Queen Anne Inauguration guns! This thing was beautiful I have it on my memories website. He and his gunner asked if they could use my onsite 18th C gunshop to make cartridges! I said yes and watched them form cartridges of 8 pounds each of Goex Cannon Black Powder!
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I just watched a show where some goofy guy in Utah was building a 'cannon' with a suppressor on it.
he did get the decibels down from 130 or so to 80 [ish] so I guess it was a success.
I got a bit of a laugh though, he went through all the trouble and expense to build a pretty accurate field piece carriage and adjustments and everything [about 1-1/2" bore] then didn't put any sights on it.
 

oscarflytyer

Well-Known Member
Holy Crap, Bat Man! I would buy a BUNCH of BP to pull the cord! I am still heartbroken that I missed going to the 150th Gettysburg anniversary, where they put 200 tubes online and fired! That HAD to be amazing!
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
Um Wow! What ball or cannister would it have shot?

18th Century Howitzer fired Shells: basicly a hollow cast iron canon ball filled with black powder and plugged with a wooden plug holding the fuse. The artillerist would cut the fuse (from experience with trajectories) so that the shell would explode over the oncoming enemy. Many times they landed in the dirt and were only 1/3 effective.
The English use the "load fuse down) principal so the charge would light the fuse. Those wacy French liked to do it in two steps.... using "fuse up" they would light the fuse then fire the gun! o_O
That is also why Mortars and Howitz in that time period had short tubes. The Howitzer and mortars had very limited movement in elevation and did not fire level to the ground. They were used for lobbing shells.
On that site link you will also see a beautiful original 5 inch Paul Revere bronze howiter. I got to fire that a number of times to be used in an Historical Artillerist Documentary video for some museum in Virginia.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
8 lbs of BP! Yikes! I want to stand WAY back.

I talked to some re-enactors after a Battle of Bull Run / Manassas event where I
was expecially impressed with the huge roar, flash and beautiful white smoke cloud
from each of the original Civil War 6 pounders. I asked how much powder it took to
make such a huge boom/flash/smoke? The guy grinned and said, "we cheat".
I asked how - they use 1/4 lb BP and a pound of ordinary flour in a aluminum foil
cartridge. The boom/flash/smoke is mostly the flour. VERY impressive.

Not too dissimilar to the video, perhaps even more smoke.

Bill

Bill
 
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