I have had one in my hands made very much like this, except...no carriage, instead, it was mounted on a frame and designed to be put in gopher tunnels, with a hair trigger...to kill gophers, of course. Problem was, out of the tunnel, it looked so interesting that people wanted to shoot it to see how it worked! Not good! I told the owner how truly dangerous that thing was, but to my knowledge, he never disassembled it. It was about 15 years old at the time, had been used a number of times, and I'm pretty sure it could rupture or explode with only a few more usages....
BoomLover