Golf ball mortar

A friend (now passed) who, prior to retirement, taught fine arts metalworking at UC Berkeley, built a bowling ball mortar in his home shop. He lived on a very isolated homestead surrounded by SPI timberland. From time to time an SPI employee would return one of his bowling balls from over a mile away.
 
A friend (now passed) who, prior to retirement, taught fine arts metalworking at UC Berkeley, built a bowling ball mortar in his home shop. He lived on a very isolated homestead surrounded by SPI timberland. From time to time an SPI employee would return one of his bowling balls from over a mile away.
That smacks of irresponsibility firing an 8 to 16 lb. projectile into timberland with no idea what the backstop or traffic in the target area would be. Not entirely unlike someone shooting into the air indiscriminately. I anticipate the cannon was fired infrequently and understand the area was not densely populated. But, still...
 
That smacks of irresponsibility firing an 8 to 16 lb. projectile into timberland with no idea what the backstop or traffic in the target area would be. Not entirely unlike someone shooting into the air indiscriminately. I anticipate the cannon was fired infrequently and understand the area was not densely populated. But, still...

Mostly fired during E Clampus Vitus get-togethers (he was past Noble Grand Humbug). Drunkenness, firearms and irresponsibility mandatory. For some odd reason they could never convince me to join.
 
All done with the chassis, I shortened the legs on the channel iron 5/8" and welded in some 1" angle to close off the ends the first pic shows the detail of the chain adjusters. Tthe best measurement I could get on the chains was 7" center to center so I put in .4" of adjustment, .3 shorter than my measurement and .1" more, good guess, it tightened the chains and had a little ways to go. Now I'm wondering what color to paint it.
 

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A friend (now passed) who, prior to retirement, taught fine arts metalworking at UC Berkeley, built a bowling ball mortar in his home shop. He lived on a very isolated homestead surrounded by SPI timberland. From time to time an SPI employee would return one of his bowling balls from over a mile away.
Their was a show on history if I remember correctly called gun smoke where a gun dealer and his family built a bowling ball cannon from a oxygen tank. Made it look like a real cannon was pretty dam cool. They showed them shoot a ball and it went nearly out of camera range. They were on a farm I believe in Colorado. Since then I have had the want to build one but don't have anywhere where I live to test that type of power.
 
My last post got interrupted by supper. Since everyone is telling near miss stories, I better tell one also. In my sister's back yard is really deep sewer manhole. One night, drunk, stoned, and bored my friends and I decided to dump a quart of gasoline in the manhole, followed by a gasoline soaked burning stick, the gasoline ignited the methane in the sewer and for the next thirty seconds flames roared and gushed out of the manhole while the lid rolled around in it's rim. It was quite a show so we tried it again but nothing happened. Of course not, we'd burned up all the fuel and oxygen, so we waited till next Tuesday and tried it again with the same spectacular results. All during the summer of 1965 this became a weekly ritual, my sister and her husband would go square dancing, and my friends and I would watch the kids, get drunk and blow up the sewer. No one got hurt, we never did any real damage and we never got caught. Red Mountain wine was $1.98 a gallon and my dad would buy as much as we wanted as long has he got a free jug for himself. Last time I visited was in 2003 and my nephew and I wanted to do it again but my sister wouldn't let us, bummer.
 
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This project is making me do something I've never done. Because I wanted clockwise to be up on the elevating screw, I have to cut a left hand thread. But first I have to solve a problem, both my chuck's minimum opening is 3/8". So I made a collet, using a 2" long piece of 1" aluminum I drilled and reamed a 3/8" hole, then I slit it down the side, it pinches down on the material and away I go.
 

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Spent the afternoon with a couple of friends at the rifle range, and I'm not in custody :p a level tablespoon of Pyrodex makes a golf ball disappear. I pretty much gave up on cutting a left hand thread everything would go along pretty smoothly and then the tool would dig in, any advice will be appreciated. This is the tool I use, Dorian MTVOR. This is a right hand tool, do I need a left hand tool to cut a left hand thread? Wanting to finish the project I went to plan B, 3/8" all thread, if I can get this figured out I'll go back to plan A.
 

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That's a purdy RH tool, but wouldn't you want a normal 60 degree threading tool for the job?

So when you say disappear, is it on the arc when it does, or is it still flying straight? Are you at risk for shooting down satellites?
 
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