It's the cement/concrete/mortar with sand and no gravel. I'm a Gunsmith not a building contractor. The tops are left on the cans. The aluminum can and will peel when fired if opened up.
Concrete is used as it is lighter than lead. Lead will raise pressure in a cannon substanially. Later I will cast round ball in my mould out zinc. Zinc is close to cast iron in weight and cast iron was what most of the roundballs were made from for cannons.
Jon, Shooting the bow had to be good exercise on the shoulder, and probably good exercise for your mind also. Keep at it.
I walked into Doctors office yesterday 14 days after surgery, using one of my Zulu knobbkerries as a walking stick. The first thing the Doctor said when I walked it was "where is your walker?" Then he said well if you are going to use the stick to walk let show you how to use it, you have it the wrong hand. He said every thing look good and I was doing quite well. He removed the 27 metal staples. The the first 24 came out no problem, the last three stung like the devil.
He reminded me that this is a major surgery and total healing takes up to a year. I am going to have good days and bad days. He stressed that I do the exercises and take the pain pills to make it bearable to do the exercises. He told me to do as much as I can, my knee will tell when enough is enough.
It's just like the list of things I said I was going to do this morning.
Got the fake sheeps wool cut for the swabs, found a ferrule and spike for one linstock. Decided to make a stand instead of spike for the other.
Got side tracked a bit. I was planning on looking for some bridge timber when I went looking for cement. We stopped down at the RV park to drop off some brass I picked up for Mike. While telling Mike and Michelle about our adventures yesterday I mentioned I was looking for some beams for shooting platforms. Mike said he had some beams. So off we go, walking out in the field through snow drifts, weeds, mud and over rocks---knee doesn't hurt that bad, I had a goal. 4 x 12's will make good shooting platforms. Right after that is when I talked to you on the phone Ernie.
We got in the truck to leave and the wife was driving. As we were backing out of the driveway something felt funny. As we drove away I told the wife she had back into something. In the typical wifely indignant voice she "I did not!"
We drove up to the Lumber yard and when I got out I went and looked at the truck. She wiped out the rear quarter panel of the bed. We went back down to the RV park and found out she had sideswiped the speed sign.
We went home and I took a pain pill and did my exercises. Since I was tired from all the exercise and walking around and stressed out from laughing at the wife for "wrecking" our truck I laid down and took a nap while she worked the phones making arrangements to get the $1500 worth of damage she did fixed. Snicker Snicker snicker.
I just read this to my wife and she used that wifely indignant voice again and said, "It wasn't $1500 it was only $1488.55!" snicker snicker snicker.
