Sounds Good.... I was looking at Bronze stock to mill on the lathe .... and
the ole' Man said he would show me how to do the rifling. That's why I want
even shot loads. I'm researching to locate 1" ball bearings.

Grape shot loads could be placed with wadding and lead weights. I'm looking
at a 24" long cannon mounted on a wheeled cart and bungeed to the bowsprit
like we did with my friend's cannon which had a 3/4" barrel.

I launched the rubber stopper from this cannon once.... which I forgot to
remove during the excitement.... it launched visibly and we tracked it to
about 3" from a friend's head on a salute shot once. It wouldn't have killed
him since we loaded very light but man was he nervous around me after that
round! Ha ha ha

CM

"Peter Wiley" wrote in message
om...
| "Capt. Mooron" wrote in message
...
| I'm planning a deck cannon but I have to see what the most common size
of
| ball bearings are available.
|
| Nah, golf balls. Cheap, reasonably dense, good range and the ammo
| looks innocent. Been there, done that. I have 3 1806 Naval 6 pounder
| cannon and 3 1812 Napoleon field cannon scaled down for this. Friend
| of mine did the castings before he swapped over to importing castings
| from India. Built one up to play with, the others are garden ornaments
| at the moment.
|
| Ball bearings are OK for grape shot, but 45 cal lead balls for
| muzzle-loading pistols are better. Depends on whether you're trying
| for a hull shot or an antipersonnel shot, between solid shot and
| grape.
|
| I'll send you a jpeg of the castings next time I'm up the farm, where
| the ordnance is stored.
|
| Peter Wiley