2" thunder mug from Pyrocreations

[tombegood]

These instructions were just emailed to me from Pyrocreations.com where I bought my mug:

                      THUNDERMUG and MINI CANNON INSTRUCTIONS
 
You can use black powder of flash powder in any of our thundermug’s or mini cannon’s. If you are not familiar with flash powder or have never used it I would suggest not to use it. I found using a plastic 35MM film container or our 1” ID X 2-1/2” ID paper tubes as a measurer for the large thundermug’s. I found out that 2 full scoops of BP using either of these works best in the 3 larger canons but in the little brother using BP you will want to pack as much as possible for the best effect.
 
#1 You will need to insert about 1-1/2 or 2 ft of slow fuse to give you plenty of time to get away. Second pour in two full scoops of FFG or FFFFG or finer of Black powder using either a 35 MM film container or a 1” ID X 2-1/2” ID paper tube capped on one end in the larger canons. Or use about a ½ teaspoon of black powder in the little brother or mini cannon’s. You can use as much BP in the mini cannons and little brother as you want for you cannot put enough BP in them to blow them up. Home made mill powder and or pyrodex will NOT work in any cannon! After doing this you will need a good wooden dowel rod that can be purchased at your local hardware store. You will need at least a 1” dowel rod but 1-1/2” will work best if you can find it or smaller for the little brother and mini cannon’s. Now get some news paper and wad it up and pack it VERY tight. Don’t be afraid it will not blow as long as you don’t use metal to metal and the rod is wood or any other non sparking type of rod. You want to pack it as tight as possible each time you wad paper up and put it in the barrel. I use some cardboard also as I go. I also cut paper discs out of an old box and put a few pieces of it in there also. You really can’t have enough paper packed on top for the tighter it’s packed the louder it will be. You can go as much as 4 full scoops if you want but I find that two is sufficient in the large mugs. If it is not loud then either you did not pack it tight enough OR you used a low grade CRAPPY black powder. Now if you would like to use flash powder and you are experienced with flash and know the dangers and precautions then a quarter to half of a 35MM can or our 1” X 2-1/2” tubes quarter to half full would be more then enough. DO NOT pack flash with anything in the large canons. Just pour it in and it’s ready to go. As for the little brother a half barrel full will suffice very well and in the mini cannon’s start with very small amounts, try starting around ¼ teaspoon and pack a small wad of paper on top of it and tamp it VERY lightly. You will find that very small amounts of flash in the mini cannons are very effective. Flash burns so much quicker then black powder that the gasses need to escape much quicker causing it to take much less powder with very little to no packing. If you pack it you risk exploding your barrel using flash and causing injury or death in the larger cannons. This barrel will be around for your children’s children’s children. Take care of it and try to oil the inside of the barrel for it will rust inside after shooting it. The oil will help keep it from rusting badly.
 

[tombegood]

 

[5kwkdw3]

The Mug I referred to in my earlier post weighs in at 68 pounds.  About the 5000 grains.  It wasn't per se a proof load in and of itself.  Old timers use to fire their pieces into freshly fallen snow.  If they saw no powder on the snow they amped up the charge.  This process was repeated time and again until they saw unburnt powder sprayed on the snow.  They then knew that that was too much powder for their piece and to back off it a bit to be able to utilize all the powder they could in their given piece.  Yes 5000 grains was used, but so was a number of other loads all behind a one pound ball.  It turns out that the Thunder Mug would completely burn a load of 2500 grains, but just a bit more and you'd end up with unburnt powder.  A more reasonable range of loads was suggested from 1500 to a max of 2000 grains.  With the 14" tube length I'm sure that the 1500 loading will be more than enough for what I'm trying to accomplish.  Sure a heavier payload (5 pounds of lead) would increase pressure more than adding powder would, but the objective was not to see the breaking point of the Thunder Mug, It was to see if it could handle a heavy load with a projectile knowing that in its use there would never be a projectile.  I think he did a fine job of figuring out all I needed to know and I'll stick with the 1500 grain loading and wad (NO projectile).  Smithy.