Salute cannon

[Dude]

I'm building a salute cannon , all stainless , barrel 3" , with 1" bore , barrel is 16" long bored 12" how much fg black powder charge can be used

[Bilbobaker]

I built a golf ball/salute cannon 8 inches long about the same diameter and a tad bigger bore..1.72
I put as much as I want (can afford) in it..
As long as the projectile is free to exit it's fine.
It will clear your sinus passages and you better have hearing protection in those ear canals.
Plus. make darn sure your cannon is secure from being tossed backwards harmfully.
Enjoy..
Use green grass lawn trimming for wadding.. (it doesn't start fires)
I personally like to see the golf ball travel so I put just enough to make it spectacularly launch, fly and land within visible range..
Disappearing golf balls while very loud are simply boring very soon like.
Colored smoke is cool.. Best to just buy the commercial smoke bombs and harvest the composition for this effect. (cheaper too)
Colored chalk is boring and messy btw.

Enjoy.

Edited October 28, 2013 by Bilbobaker

[Dude]

Thanks , I built a smaller one, and use newspaper as wadding , if I knew how to post pictures on here I'd show them to you , this new one I'm putting four wheels with bearings in them , it's gonna be cute , I hope it don't run off to far when fired. I'd read somewhere a guy was putting 2 oz of fg powder in a 3" x1" bore cannon

[Wiley]

Hey Dude, you're going to be hard pressed to blow up that barrel with BP or Pyrodex P, which is what it's designed for anyway. 2oz should do just fine. The only problem you could run into is using so much powder that you effectively waste it by shooting the excess out of the barrel. I'd recommend that you give Pyrodex P a shot (no pun intended), and maybe think about trying the foil blank charges I described in the other thread you replied to. If you need pictures I'd be happy to supply them. I think you'll find that Pyrodex P is a little louder than BP, and it's cheaper too. I really love salute cannons; they can make some really bone-jarring reports, and you don't have to mess around with flash and all the legal nonsense involved with it.

[Dude]

Thanks pyromaniac , do you use the same amount of powder with peradox p as you do with fg black powder, post some info about the foil charges, I'm new and kinda dumb with this stuff , but very amused

[Dude]

Also , I seem where you can use the colored powder from smoke bombs , do you crack them open and use the powder as your charge too , and the same amount, there seems to be a lot of different kind of powder , little confusing which to use with a cannon ?

[Wiley]

I wouldn't play with those smoke mixes. They're almost sure to be chlorate based, and chlorate gives me the willies. The great thing about these cannons is that with a big enough cannon, you can create ground salute-huge reports, using only black powder or Pyrodex, which is even safer than BP because it's even more insensitive and burns slower. I also think that the lower pitched boom is "cooler" than the noise that flash makes. Yes, on those tests between BP (I used 3Fg--works great for reports) and Pyrodex P, I used exactly the same VOLUME of powder. Keep in mind that Pyrodex is less dense than BP, so a filmcan of BP will weigh more than a filmcan of Pyrodex. What's great about this is, if you load by volume, you get more shots per pound out of the less dense Pyrodex. This makes it still cheaper. I'll dig up some pics of making a blank.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Wiley

[Wiley]

Here are the pics of making a 2" blank containing four film canisters of Pyrodex P. Needlenose pliers (not shown) can help twisting up the tail, but you have to be careful not to tear the foil. You want to twist the tails as as tight as you can without tearing them. Remember, this is HEAVY DUTY foil, not the regular stuff. At the grocery store, they should be side by side on the shelf. The video is of my 2 foot long cannon with a blank just like this one. In person, the shockwave was pretty impressive!

Edited October 31, 2013 by Wiley