Interesting photo, Rivercat. The ignorance which drove this and similar designs we have seen at Trophy Point at West Point, NY and in reference books over the years is the fact that the number of balls propelled cannot be what the casual observer thinks when they see the muzzle of these devices. To prevent a logjam of musket balls you must stop filling the thing with balls long before you reach a point distant from the top of your powder charge equal to the length of that powder charge.
So, while 10 or 12 75 cal balls may seem like a lot, the shape of the muzzle actually works against you as these few balls tend to bounce off one another and the increasingly divergent side walls of the tube until you get a sort of chain reaction of wildly ricocheting balls escaping the plane of the muzzle instead of a tightly packed, organized, shot column moving smoothly ahead. To make matters worse, any sort of shot protecting, over powder wad, becomes useless at the moment of discharge due to the same divergent tube walls. So you would have blasts of powder gasses blowing through your shot, further confusing their tendency to go straight ahead, and the failure to maintain pressure means that the initial velocity cannot be maintained, so all of the actions of the confused shot charge would happen in slow motion compared to the organized shot column of a similar capacity, conventional cannon. It is just conjecture, but we believe that a soldier could walk through the widely dispersed pattern at 75 yards. Due to low velocity, even if hit, you could be bruised instead of holed. Could anyone say that was true of a two pounder similarly loaded which was aimed at the soldier at the same distance? We think not. "Riddled" is the description that quickly comes to mind.
And now to address the troublemaker, Cannonmn, We are signed up for far too many projects as it is, however, this one certainly has some interesting elements, does it not? It is unusual, rare, would be fun to build, it has the mystery of unknown firing results and the shape looks like death to anyone stupid enough to stand before it which makes for a suspenseful Test-Fire video.
John, you almost had me including it on the official list of Special Projects for 2013 until I remembered what Mike said just the other day. He said, " Tracy, if I catch you signing us up for any more special projects, I'm going to stretch your neck as thin and tight as one of Charlie Daniels' fiddle strings as he plays "The Devil went down to Georgia"!! Ouch.
Tracy
