My son and I got invited to a backyard cannon shoot at a friend's house on the 4th. What a great way to spend a hot summer afternoon. There were ten guns present ranging from my little .62cal RevWar 6-pounder all the way up to a full-sized 12lb Napoleon. I got to serve nearly every gun and my son (at age 10) got to fire the Napoleon, as well as a rifle and pistol during the small arms portion of the festivities. I couldn't be prouder of the way he handled himself on the range. My little gun was well recieved even though it was smaller than some of the hand guns present. I had brought along my parts-kit MG42 (dummy gun) and lafette tripod mount on the chance that some of the guests might like to see it. Lots of folks wanted to get their pictures taken with it. Next time I hope to have it converted to a propane gas gun so they can make some real noise with it. The accuracy competition even gave me an idea... I'm thinking of making a fixture so that I can dismount my cannon's barrel and connect it to modern German MG3 tripod that I bought to go with my MG42. The mount has a built in recoil spring system that's designed to handle the kick of 7.62 NATO rounds at a rate of nearly 1200 rounds per minute. I could even build a slider with softer progressive springs and let the gun travel further to reduce the recoil even more. The cool thing is that it would give me a really stable base and some crystal clear Zeiss optics to shoot through. My son even suggested using the trigger actuating bar to somehow light the fuse. My only question is, would using a modern tripod and optics be considered cheating? Even so, it would be fun to try. Maybe it would be cooler to do it with my repro '53 Enfield.
