[Herb]

Back in the early 60's when I lived in Arizona one of my best friends made a cannon out of a piece of 3" 4360 cold rolled steel. He took it to a machine shop and had the bore drilled out and a touch hole drilled into the rear top of the barrel. He had steel rod, about 1", welded to each side to hold it in the base mount which he made out of 2x12 lumber nailed together to form a base about 1' high. We took it out in the desert and up to an old sump site on the side of a small rise. We sat it down,(it weighed about 75 lbs) and just in case, we tied it to an old tire that was there. He poured 3 12ga shotgun shells filled with black powder down the bore and rolled the 1-1/16" ball down the bore on top of it. He had come across a lot of balls out of old pinball machines and this was the ammo. He put about three inches of dynamite fuse in the touchhole and lit it off. Not knowing what to expect we both placed a respectable distance between us and the cannon before it fired. It was sitting pretty much level and aimed out into the desert. There was a loud boom, lots of white smoke and about a 1/4 mile out a large 6-8'cloud of dust was thrown up where the ball hit. Really impressed we decided to try it again. This time we aimed it at an old water heater that we had stood up, touched it off and the water heater was still standing there, dang, missed. We walked over to it and found a neat 1 1/16' hole right thru it, apparently the ball was going so fast the heater didn't even absorb the energy of the ball on it's way thru. We did note that each time it fired it did a backflip and yanked the tire about three feet with it, a real nasty recoil. Did I tell you the one about my homemade rocketship that blew up when I lit it?? LOL.