A Pirate Pig

[Cannoneer]

Using animal carcasses in ballistic tests is nothing new, but these clowns had to dress it up as a pirate. I'm guessing that the silly steak knives segment was influenced by "The Pirates of the Caribbean", but it was interesting to see the damage that grape shot, chain, and large nails caused to real flesh and bone.
BTW - Langrage is the word that's used to describe scrap iron, bolts, nails, pieces of chain etc., fired from cannon. 

http://www.youtube.com/v/6TTkPE0ew40?fs=1&hl=en_US

[gulfcoastblackpowder]

If you don't like playing with your food, it's best not to watch that video.

Though I don't like their methods of disproving just about anything, it's simple (and fun) to prove some things.  Nice to see the damage done by those different types of projectiles, though I don't understand why they considered chain as an improvised projectile, since it was well documented as a standard.  For the record, I was expecting it would be completely cut in half.

[Double D]

I sometimes wonder about the how well researched Mythbusters realy are.

[subdjoe]

I sometimes wonder about the how well researched Mythbusters realy are.

Not very.  They are more about the entertainment value than anything else.  A friend of my provided the gun they used as the comparison for the Leather Cannon episode.  She had asked some questions and then said something like "Oh, you mean make noise and smoke and blow things up."  To which the reply was basically "You got it."  They know they are not accurate.

[Double D]

I remember when they went to Cannonmn for some advice....John set up a cannon in his front yard and fired off a blank with the gun pointed at the Neighbors mini van...they always seemed so safety conscious and then they did that...maybe John was the director.

[Artilleryman]

When I worked on a History Channel program a friend gave me some good advice........"you have to suspend reality for a little while"..........

[Cannoneer]

I'd have to agree with those that think that this show's producers are more interested in entertaining than they are in fact finding.
With the wall they built to represent the hull of a wooden warship in this clip, I fail to see how they can seriously think that they conducted a valid experiment to determine whether flying splinters of oak could be lethal.
Harry is back with his repro M1841 6-pounder (Moses), but the balls that he ordered came in too large a diameter, so they had to be ground down an eighth of an inch.

http://www.youtube.com/v/axk_3weiwkE?


 

[Double D]

A day or two after they did the pig episode I went to their forum and it was loaded with links to the  U.S.S. Niagara video.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfsuIaTU92Y

[Cannoneer]

That video which was intended to demonstrate the damage that would have been inflicted on a wooden warship's bulwarks by solid shot fired from a large bore carronade is exactly the one I thought of after seeing the "Mythbusters" attempt at conducting a "similar" experiment. The folks that produced the USS Niagara video built a valid representation of the strong hull of a period ship, and they also used the correct reproduction ordnance that would have originally been used in battle. Of course the people that conducted the Niagara demonstration came to an entirely different conclusion than the Mythbusters did, and they also showed us why carronades came to be known as 'smashers'.