Well the move has been made. My bowling ball mortar is now in Oklahoma.
Before I left Montana I made one last attempt at launching a bowling ball 1 one mile.
Here is my "shooting range". The piece of grass sticking out from the right in the stubble is 1 mile from the firing point. The ridge is about 200 yards beyond the grass. The ridge just flattens out and the stubble extends for another 1/2 mile.
I fired 4 shots. I started with 1 lb of Fa and a 105,000 grain round ball. (15 pound bowling ball.)
I fired two 1 lb shots. When fired the balls, went beyond the ridge. I reduced my load to 12 ozs and fired two more balls, those also went beyond the ridge.
When we went to look for the balls we could not find them. We suspect wind drift carried them off to the west-right into a planted crop area, close to an over grown grass area. This is pretty rock gravelly ground so I don't think the balls buried themselves.
I wish could have found the balls to take measurements. Oh well.
The Mortar and I are in OK now. My mile shot days are over. It take a lot of powder for those kind of shots. The recoil from that kind of charge is pretty hard on equipment. I will stick to shorter ranges from now on, say no more than 500 yards..
I have a couple more fittings to make and then I will paint everything. Once that is done I will look for someplace to shoot in OK.
I had talk to OK F.A.S.T about shooting in Guymon in September. They said they would get back to me.
Before I left Montana I made one last attempt at launching a bowling ball 1 one mile.
Here is my "shooting range". The piece of grass sticking out from the right in the stubble is 1 mile from the firing point. The ridge is about 200 yards beyond the grass. The ridge just flattens out and the stubble extends for another 1/2 mile.
I fired 4 shots. I started with 1 lb of Fa and a 105,000 grain round ball. (15 pound bowling ball.)
I fired two 1 lb shots. When fired the balls, went beyond the ridge. I reduced my load to 12 ozs and fired two more balls, those also went beyond the ridge.
When we went to look for the balls we could not find them. We suspect wind drift carried them off to the west-right into a planted crop area, close to an over grown grass area. This is pretty rock gravelly ground so I don't think the balls buried themselves.
I wish could have found the balls to take measurements. Oh well.
The Mortar and I are in OK now. My mile shot days are over. It take a lot of powder for those kind of shots. The recoil from that kind of charge is pretty hard on equipment. I will stick to shorter ranges from now on, say no more than 500 yards..
I have a couple more fittings to make and then I will paint everything. Once that is done I will look for someplace to shoot in OK.
I had talk to OK F.A.S.T about shooting in Guymon in September. They said they would get back to me.