Cannon Ball storage boxes

[Rickk]

I've been making all these nice new cannon balls with my new mould from Powder Keg and I needed a place to store them. I made of some stackable boxes that interlock and hold about 25# worth in each box.





I paint the balls bright blue to make them easier to find.

[Double D]

Rick, I found one, check your PM!

[Rickk]

Hey Double D... definitely not mine... wrong caliber at the very least 

[Double D]

Okay, got it! Of course if it was yours I was going to suggest you reduce your powder charge, you were landing on the wrong continent, reduce significantly  as you were landing  on the wrong continent in another hemisphere.

Tell us how you made those boxes.

[Powder keg]

I need one of tem for my bowling blls They make a hek of a rackett rolling around in the back of my pickup. Nice jub Rick!

[Rickk]

The base is a 2x8 with 12 holes bored about half way thru to hold the balls.

The sides are 1/2 inch plywood glued and nailed to the base with the bottom 1/2 inch exposed (making a stackable, interlocking arrangement possible). Urethane glue ("Gorilla Glue) works good for this... holds well, takes up gaps in misalighment. The nails only go into the base... the corners are simply glued together.

The side height is such that the base of the next box sits only about 1/8 inch over the previous box's balls to hold the balls in place.

The one trick that is not obvious is that the part of the base that is exposed got shaved a bit on my power saw to remove a sawblade's thickness to 1/2 inch deep. That makes the exposed part of the 2x8 about an 1/8 inch smaller so that it fits easily into the next box when you stack them.

The handles are cheapo metal things from Home Depot, with the lower pair of screws replaced with longer stainless drywall screws for added strength.

Be careful about screw length for the handles, as well as be careful about nail placement for the side pieces that nothing sticks thru the holes bored into the 2x8 that are supposed to retain the balls.

[Powder keg]

Rick? How do you find anything all boxed up like that? My stuff is all over the place

[Rickk]

The neatness thing is a bit of temporary insanity.

I took a week off from work this spring and it rained the whole week.

I went to Sears that Monday and bought a drill press to make my mortar with and found that it would not fit in my shed cuz of all the crapulence that was in the way. Since it was raining and there wasn't much else to do I spent the whole week drinking beer and cleaning 12 years of accumulation out of the shed so that I could get the drill press in there.

It was so bad that on Friday morning (trash pickup day) I waited untill everyone in the neighborhood went to work and then drove up and down the street in my jacked up, camoflage painted golf cart looking for extra space in the neighbors garbage cans.

No need to worry, there is hope... there are ongoing signs of deterioration