eod20,
I take it you've not shot these mortars before. How far do you want to shoot?
The recommend maximum safe load for the one inch diameter chamber 185 grains. This chamber will hold substantially more. The Manufacturer recommends 250 grs of FFG for ball load and 700 grs. for a salute. These are hefty charges and should be adequate to please any one.
This is were I start my safety lecture. The old timers here are groaning and heading for cover now.
First the manufacturers recommend load. There is no doubt that this cannon will shoot this load all day long. Day in, Day out. You shot 10 rounds/cans of cement of 250 grs everyday for a week and you are first going to be throughly bored, but second you are going to find your carriage has loosened up. That load is going to beat on the carriage pretty good.
As to being throughly bored. When you launch a can with 250 grains it is very quickly disappear out of sight. Fun stuff, yes. I'll shoot one or two out my gun...you have to. But after a while it quickly becomes boring. And it is unsafe unless you can see with your own eyes where the can will land. It's just like shooting any gun you have to know where your round will land. In my case I will know where my cans land and I will know there are no people in my impact zone. I can see that.
I sure would not be shooting a can out of sight into the brush or trees, even on my own property. If there is someone or something out there and you hit them you will held responsible, even if they are trespassing. If you have been paying attention to the news lately, prosecutors are taking dim view of careless acts with guns. A man shooting at a deer killed a small child in house on nearby properety and is being charged with a crime. Another rman who shot at movement in a tree and wounded another hunter, has been sentenced to prison for a criminal act. I can't imagine the County DA would hesitate one second to prosecute a person who killed or injured someone with a cannon.
My only reason for my constant preaching about safety with these guns is for the preservation of our sport. So if you have stuck with me this far and I haven't scared you away, what to do.
Trust me when I say it's fun to fire a big charge and send the can out of sight. But, and a big but it is, it's only half the fun of firing a can with a reduced load and watch it fly all the way to a target and see it impact. Seeing the impact is a lot more fun. Firing your mortar, hearing the thump as a popcan full of cement flies out of your mortar. It goes up, up, up then just seems to hang there. You won't believe how long it seems to hang there. Then it starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger and splashes down in the stock pond and kicks up a 20 foot geyser of water, that soaks everyone. Or it hits out in the dry field and kicks up a cloud of dust. Try hitting the old stump or the rock out cropping out in the field. Oops need a little more right windage. Round was short so you add some powder and then it goes long. I got to shoot a 64 Ford Falcon one time.
The guys here even invented a cannon shooting bingo game...they had a good time shooting their mortars to play that. They learned how to aim so they could hit their target...okay so they learned to aim to get closer to their target. They also learned how little powder it took to move the impact point a long ways.
The N-SSA guys have a competition where they fire mortar rounds at a stake at 100 yards. I believe they fire 7 rounds and then measure the closest 5 rounds and the team with the shortest accumulated distance wins.
I have given this lecture before to several of the regulars here and they took me at my word and are still here and some will even say I am right.
Okay, lecture over, have fun but do it safely.
