Memorial Day - who's shooting?

[Terry C.]

Barring some unforeseen circumstance, I'll be doing my traditional cannon salutes on Memorial Day, to honor those that have given their lives in the service of our country.

Who else will be shooting on 5/26 ?


(hopefully, I won't end up in the hospital like I did after my NYD shoot)

[EL Caz 66]

Terry,

 I will also have my traditional cannon salute to honor the service men and women that gave the ultimate price for this wonderful  country of ours.

 GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!

[cannonmn]

I'm shooting a 6 CM Krupp breechloading mountain gun tomorrow.   I haven't developed a metal projectile for it yet so I'm using one of my favorite el cheapo projectile materials, PVC pipe.  The 2.375" OD pipe fits the Krupp perfectly, so the rifling engraves and spins it.  I cut a 9" section and tape a plywood hole saw plug that's the same diameter as the PVC pipe, onto the rear end, closing the 1/4 inch drill hole with a bolt.  Then we fill the pipe with sand and tape over the front end, load and shoot.

We've tried it with this gun before and it is remarkably accurate at 100 yds.

This Krupp was made in 1892 and uses powder bags behind the projectile, and a separate primer.  Ours is adapted to take shotgun primers, since we cant' get whatever kind of primers it originally used.  It has a Broadwell ring obturation system.

[seacoastartillery]

      My son, Mike, and I traveled to Ault, Colorado today to pay our respects to those veterans who died while in the service of the United States.  There is a small, but thoughtful memorial there  which is best described by the photos below.  The 28 cm German Minenwerfer was a powerful WWI heavy mortar and represents the formidable weapons faced by the United States Armed Forces throughout the ages.    Regards, two veterans and the kid.

[thelionspaw]

The Lion's Paw, remembered 600 years of conflict.

[thelionspaw]

15th century style.

[Terry C.]

Here's to those that have given of themselves in the name of liberty!!!

Fired three salute rounds from the ¼-scale 12-pounder Napoleon. No video this time, I had to set up in a hurry as we had a couple of extra unplanned activities today that delayed the cannon fire much later than I'd planned.

I already have lots of video.

I was a little concerned about the reaction from some new neighbors, but they were okay with the cannon, and even came out to watch.

The Fourth of July will be the true test of their tolerance...

[Tropico]

We did not prepare for the memorial day shoot with mortar round this year but we did get out and manage to fire a few signals giving our thanks to those who have given the gift of our freedom .
I cheated    I finally shot my new swivel., it shoots very well thank you to those who had a part in its construction..., and to those who didn't ...., No ., you cant have it      O.K. the cheat? I used a 3 1/2" hose clamp with a cut piece of 16 penny vinyl coated sinker (Nail) then lined with green felt as to not scratch my pretty bronze weapon. I simply measured the diameter of the breach ., then divided that by 1/2 then measured the length of the nail from the center of the bore.
 
At approximately 50 yards (open-sited) we could  constantly hit the board 3 for 3   

The three guns in this photo are of course the 1" bronze swivel ., on the right side a New Ruger Vaquero in 357 magnum and on the left a new American Derringer also in 357 magnum.

To our Veterans., Thank You., Thank You., Thank You  
All in all thats a pretty mixed bag. As the photo shows., The pirate intothe civil war and thru the cowboy..., Hoorah!!

[rusty barrels]

OOOOOOOOOO Pretty brass cannons

[Double D]

Sights?

[Tropico]

I got the idea when seacoast was showing how to build a rifle scope mount ..., I believe they fashioned it from Aluminum and mounted it on their Parrot.  Even with the site its hard to hit a target when the cannon is not fixed., but rather able to move left to right and up and down on a swivel .

[cannonmn]

One good thing about shooting the sand-filled PVC pipe projectiles is that they always shatter on impact, so they will never ricochet, and you don't have to dig them out to recover the metal.  Ricochet has been a serious problem on some private property we use, where there are neighbors downrange, and the "frangible" projectiles will help out a lot.  We're going to start putting flour or powdered plaster of Paris in the nose to help us see where they hit.  With the sand there's a puff of dust, but with white powder it should be clearer.

We shot the Krupp at 200 yards this past weekend and it was quite accurate using the PVC projectiles.  We're using a 9" section of 2.375 OD pipe, and 3 oz. of either FG or cannon grade. Only problem we had was getting the projectile seated each time, since it is up against the bore at the front end, so we had to pound it in from the breech.  We'll probably wind up using a shorter pipe or turning the front end down to a slightly smaller diameter to avoid the sticking while we're trying to load.

When we put a piece of canvas bolted to the rear of the projectile's wood sabot and soak it with WD-40, we get a nice smoke trail to the target when we fire.  Don't do that if there's any fire hazard downrange.

[KABAR2]

One good thing about shooting the sand-filled PVC pipe projectiles is that they always shatter on impact, so they will never ricochet, and you don't have to dig them out to recover the metal.  Ricochet has been a serious problem on some private property we use, where there are neighbors downrange, and the "frangible" projectiles will help out a lot.  We're going to start putting flour or powdered plaster of Paris in the nose to help us see where they hit.  With the sand there's a puff of dust, but with white powder it should be clearer.
 

Stop by Home Depot and pick up a few bottles of red or blue (I think they have yellow also) chalk that are used to fill chalk lines, then you can tell which shot hit where by the color.