Bowling ball fun

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

TheDoubleD

Sharpshooter
Supporting Member
Special Hen Supporter
Joined
Jun 19, 2018
Messages
528
Reaction score
803
Location
Edmond
That is pretty frightening device.

Over the years on the Cannon board we have seen similar devices fail using black powder.

People have been hurt and killed from such devices. Always reported in the news as cannon accidents. Not cannons at all. Usually failed from filling them with a smokeless powder, a propellant. But Tannerite is a binary explosive. There is a quote given almost always after these accident, "been shooting it for years like this and never had a problem before".

I don't know if this is water pipe or high pressure well casing. Water pipe is very dangerous and is usually welded seam and low pressure. Some of the high pressure casings are seamless and alloy and are very strong. You still need wall thickness of one caliber minimum and do not use Tannerite it is an explosive and its pressure is increased by restriction, it is dangerous in this application. With all that welding you need to anneal that entire device as welding can cause embrittlement. That one caliber guideline is for the bottom also.

Don't us Tannerite this way. Use black powder or pyrodex. Maximum charge is 2 ounces per inch of bore. The chamber diameter is your bore diameter as well as your caliber.

Most likely your first sign of pressure with Tannerite will be shrapnel. Youtube if full of video's of appliances destroyed with Tannerite blowing shrapnel all over the place and it is scary. Appliances are low pressure containment devices, you are building a high pressure containment device. Watch some of those tannerite video's on youtube. Buried or confined that stuff throws debris every where.

You can build a safe device. Be glad to help you

About shooting bowling balls, be very aware of direction of wind and angle. In our experience bowling ball are easily blown by wind. Fired straight up the ball can land behind you. The mile shot I made got caught in the wind. The ball landed just over 600 feet down wind of the aim point.

Another thing make sure you can see the impact zone. Don't fire it off in the brush. You will think it it went 100 yards and it actually went much further. One of the first long range shots we made was in Montana stubble field. We had clear view of nothing but wheat stubble for mile and miles. We fired and lost site of the ball. Our impact zone was 1-2 miles. The ball was found 3 miles down range a week later by the farmer spraying weeds. The ball had hit the ground, bounced and rolled several hundred yards before it stopped.

He is my breech plug test video using black powder.

 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Top Bottom