French '75' Golf Ball Cannon

[dominick]

I recently completed a  replica of a model  1897 french '75' golf ball cannon complete with recoil slide, wheel brakes, trail anchor spade and lanyard ignition.  Here's some pics.  Anyone interested in one, PM me.  Dom

[Cat Whisperer]

Dom -

Looks like a good clean design & work.  That takes some effort.

Good pix.  I tried to rearrange them into a column, but I'm not familiar enough with the HTML to do it right.  (Displaying side by side  one has to scroll far over for ALL the text of ALL subsequent posts.)

What range do you get?

[Will Bison]

Hey Dom;

Real nice job. I see you installed wheel brakes and everything.

Did you use any sort of  buffer/damper in the recoil mechanism?

Bill

[Double D]

Wow, that's a neat looking piece.  You need some fire and smoke pictures.

I fixed the pictures.  You need to hit enter after each picture.  Also use the Tags here on the board instead of  HTML code.  The board software lets you post large pictures without  worrying about size.  The software formats the picture to the rigth size.  You only then have to click on the picture to see it full size.

[rifleshooter2]

One word  FANTASTIC

[dominick]

Thanks for the compliments everyone and thanks for fixing the pictures  
DD. I'm still rusty at posting pics so I greatly appreciate all the help I can get.  This particular cannon was sold before it was completed. When I delivered it to its new owner we decided to fire some golf balls from it to test the recoil system. I had a cheap disposable camera for taking the action photos. Needless to say they didn't turn out.  Hopefully I'll hook up with him sometime soon (he's a local guy) and I'll get some good action photos to post .
   I used a heavy duty hardware store spring, kinda like a short [12" long] version of a standard garage door spring for the recoil system. The slide moves back about 7 or 8 inches when firing a golf ball with a hot load [700 grains fg] and the carriage moves very little when the slide returns.  The entire gun weighs about 130 lbs so that seems to keep the gun stable.  The rod on the right side of the gun is the stop which has a rubber bumper.  I'll have more info and "how to's" that I'll post shortly.  thanks, Dom

[dominick]

CW wrote;
                 

What range do you get?

I'm not sure what the range is, although other golf ball cannon builders advertise 1200 yards.  I'm starting on another one  next week and when completed I'll take it to the range for testing.  I had the above cannon along with a civil war cannon at an arts and crafts show last weekend and fired it while a friend video taped it. I'll try to place the video online somewhere and make a reference to it. Any suggestions on that?

[Powder keg]

Here is a new link. They sell cannon related stuff. Also there is some pictures of a 75mm cannon :grin:

http://www.historicalordnanceworks.com/

[Double D]

Link added!