It Is Less Than 4 Inches Long!

Yesterday afternoon while I was leisurely talking to my Mom on the phone while sitting on the couch in the family room, I heard an explosion! For a split second I thought they were testing ammo at Camp Williams and then I thought maybe not and went outside towards our detached 4-car, 2-story garage and yelled, "Patrick, are you alive?" He yelled back, "Uh......I think I used too much powder". Did I mention that all the doors and windows in the house and the garage were shut tight?

Look back to the previous post to the previous post and look at the little brass cannon Patrick is working on in the picture of the lathe. That could make that sound????

Patrick showed me how he put the tiny cannon in the vice on the work bench in the garage and poured a small amount of powder (leftover piccolo petes) in the barrel and then placed a little piece of paper towel for wadding with his tiny ramrod and then the bb pellet. Then he poured more powder in the top hole and lit it with a blow torch that he lit with his boy scout flint and steel (we are out of matches---another experiment using all the match heads?) He set up a cardboard box to fire into backed by a large block of lumber. The bb was nowhere to be found in the wood block.

Last night we had the stimulating dinner conversation discussing what kind of carriage Pat should make for the new cannon----a step up type like on a ship or in a fort, or the wheel carriage like the civil war so you can move it around easier. Mark and Patrick were talking like someone was going to storm our castle and they needed to defend our property and this was serious business. Did I mention that said cannon is less than four inches long!!!