American Artillery Association Mortar Regulations

[John N]

The National Safety Rules and Procedures for Shooting Muzzleloading Artillery, as adapted by the American Artillery Association, states that "mortar beds shall permanently restrict barrels from raising above 75 degrees from the horizontal."  Do any forum members compete in AAA shoots, and if so, how are you PERMANENTLY restricting your barrels from rising above 75 degrees in elevation? I have a couple of commercial beer can mortars and a golf ball mortar and all the barrels can all be raised straight up and even past vertical.

[GGaskill]

to do that, assuming you have an elevation screw, is to lock a nut on the underside of the screw the prevents turning the screw past the critical point.

Depending on your mount, you could add pins to the cheeks that prevented the tube from elevating too high.

[Cat Whisperer]

John N -

 GGaskill said it right "... depending on your mount ...".  I have two different designs - one with fixed at 45d tube and the other that a pin through the trunion allows elevation changes at 15d increments.  (Fixed is much more usefull on a small mortar - as changing powder charges is faster and easier).  If it were a combat situation it would be different - but not many woodchucks fire back when fired upon.  A third situation would be where you have a continuously adjustable (by wedge or screw thread) you could put stops in for either the tube or the adjustment mechanism.

[Double D]

In the case of the 24 PDR Coehorn the carriage block relief prevents the barrel from elevating.