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First Golf Ball design for me

4K views 20 replies 9 participants last post by  double d 
#1 ·
I am usually on the weaponsguild forum, but a couple members recommended I check my thoughts with you fine folk. So here I am.

Background: I am a welder by trade and have been manufacturing roller coaster parts for a major theme park here in Orlando for about 20 years. We perform repairs as well as manufacture new components out of steel, stainless, aluminum, and various alloys. We must be certified by AWS for any material or position we weld. I have an AS degree in Welding Technology and have been a shop foreman for quite a while. I am also in the Florida Army National Guard where I turn wrenches on Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters. I have built a lot of firearms from parts kits and in the process have fabricated numerous items from scratch. So far I've built all semi-auto (I like to stay completely on the good side of ATF) versions of Uzi's, STEN MK 2, 3, &5, H&K MP5, MP5K, MP5SD, G3, and 93, Yugoslav M53 (copy of German MG42), and am working on a Finnish KP44 now. I have also made a couple of Form 1 Suppressors. I have a Lathe, milling machine, Mig welder, Stick/Tig welder, parkerizing set up, and an oven for Cerakote/powder coating.

I am not a novice, but wouldn't call myself a pro either.

I would like to venture into the world of black powder cannons and think that golf ball artillery would be a good start. I have been looking through the posts here and think I have come up with a relatively safe design, but please let me know if you see anything that doesn't look right with my design. I took the dimensions for the powder pocket in the breech plug from the KISS golf ball mortar. I would like to make a one barrel that could be either used as an infantry style mortar, or put on a small carriage to look kind of like a scaled down towed howitzer. Please forgive my crude Paint drawings.

Does this look reasonable? Safe?
 

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#2 ·
Your skill level would be much better served staying away from golf balls. With your ability to make various firearms you would do well to find a pre 1898 artillery piece and copy as close as you can. Full patterns can be had for just about everything you can find . What you can't find can be developed from photos. very satisfying end product.:tango_face_smile:
 
#3 · (Edited)
Well your welding skills and engineering skills appear just fine, excellent in fact. Wish you lived closer, I have work for you.

You cannon design skills, well we can help. What you show is probably pretty safe. The problem is the next guy to own this will not know what you have built and will have no way to know if your gun is safe, because it doesn't appear to meet minimum standards . The material exceeds minimum standards but we only know that because you have told us.

We here try stay with antique designs to start with. That is what this board is about. We can help you with plans to build golf ball cannon of an Antique design. But the first thing we will is point you where you find zinc round ball to shoot.. You will not be very satisfied shooting golf balls,
 
#4 · (Edited by Moderator)
Well your welding skills and engineering skills appear just fine, excellent in fact. Wish you lived closer, I have work for you.

You cannon design skills, well we can help. What you show is probably pretty safe. The problem is the next guy to own this will not know what you have built and will have
no way if your gun is safe, because it doesn't appear to meet minimum standards. By material it exceeds minumum

We here try stay with antique designs to start with. That is what this board is about. We can help you with plans to build golf ball cannon of an Antique design. But the firat thing we will is point you where you find zinc round ball to shoot.. You will not be very satisfied shooting golf balls,



I think you mean he will not be very satisfied shooting golf balls.:tango_face_wink:


Zulu
 
#5 ·
I am not really interested in the historical designs hence what I drew. What is it about my design that is not safe? I seem to have MUCH more wall thickness than the KISS golf ball mortar and am using MUCH stronger material. What am I missing, please educate me as this is not my field of expertise.
 
#6 ·
I don't think there is anything about your design that is unsafe. From your description if is very strong and very safe. EXCEPT

How do we know that just by looking. We cant tell. You have to tell us. And the next person who owns this cannon has no way of knowing what your cannon is made from and how safe it might be. It is about appearance. If your gun looks like a pipe with a plug welded in the end then people are going to think that is what it is. If it looks like a cannon, even a contemporary cannon like you want, then people will think it is safe, and if you take the time and pay attention to details it probably will be safe. Antiques designs usually were made with safety built in, That is why we suggest them.

Please take a few moments to read our stickies on safe design and construction.

What is the diameter of the powder chamber? Based on recommend guidelines the maximum diameter of your chamber should be .675

This board is primarily about building and shooting Antique cannons. We require this for two reasons, proven safe designs and antique status. Contemporary cannons, how ever can be exempted by using an antique ignition. To protect us and you, we require a letter from ATF to confirm that Antique ignition exemption for your design. We have a number of these letters posted. I have such a letter posted for my bowling ball mortar. We do allow contemporary cannon building, we just require the ATF letter first.

That being said let me make some suggestion to help you with your current build.

The reduced chamber was used in mortars and howitzers. These chambers were usually some sort of taper and not a straight cylinder. In a cannon this type, a reduced and cylindrical chamber is hard to load, especially using cartridges. Pouring loose powder down the barrel and seating a ball on it is difficult. Try pouring it into a sub chamber. Cartridges are safer and easier loading . The number one reason people use a sub chamber is so they can use a smaller diameter steel wit a larger bore.

Building a sub-chamber in a mortar is fine as you greater access to the chamber and the mortar is low velocity "lobbing" gun. The cylinder chamber was used in keeping with the design theme of the K.I.S.S. Mortar-simplified construction techniques. I have worked on building a K.I.S.S cannon a number of times, but always gave up mainly because of the difficulty of loading issue.


We can help build this gun and make one you will be proud of. You have the construction skills and we have the cannon skills
 
#7 ·
This is the exact information I was looking for! I didn't detail the diameter of the powder chamber, but was planning on 1/2" using a ball end mill to make it a hemisphere. I may also taper the powder chamber as well and would use a funnel for loading powder. I was also going to drill a wick hole (maybe a liner for this as well)...seems like 3/16" is the generally accepted diameter, but am still in the planning phase. I like the idea of a slap hammer using a nipple and either #11 or 209 primers, but that could be added afterwards, however I do understand the weight issue with a pull cord and the possibility of "yanking" the cannon out of position at the moment of firing and the associated danger (so it will most likely be cannon fuse only ignition).

If I use letter/number stamps to clearly mark it, would that suffice? I would most likely stamp the type of material, "golf balls only", max powder charge of something like 125 grains of FFG powder. This would be a "for me only" item and if the time ever comes that I get board with it, I would most likely cut it up into scrap.

I'm really only looking for a "novelty" piece of artillery...not going for any kind of distance records or any crazyness like that...just something that I could do some demonstrations somewhere between 100-200 yards.

I Grew up visiting my Great Uncle LaPan's foundry (I know several of the members here have some of his cannons), and while I appreciate the craftsmanship, skill, and historic value in those types of pieces, it's just not my flavor. I am much more interested in WWI & WWII, and that is kind of why I like the "look" of the scaled down infantry mortar and something akin to a 75mm towed howitzer.

If His foundry hadn't burned down, I probably would have had him make me a Civil War piece. When I was younger I couldn't afford it and now that I am older with a little disposable funds I could. I would really want it more for the family history value though.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Candles have wicks, cannon have vent holes for fuses. Shirts have pockets, cannons have chambers.

Funnels are great for mortars, but a cannon have to be tipped up for funnel loading. Can be hazardous and pain in the backside, especially for a gun as big as you are going end up with.t Funnel not recommended for cannons, especially larger guns. Cartridges are the way to go.

For a straight bored cannon of golf ball dimensions bore size with proper windage (1/40th of bore) is 1.72" So over the chamber you need a diameter of 5.16 inches to meet minimum cannon standards. You are using 4140 and that exceeds minimum standard and used in modern smokeless powder gun barrels. The rule of thumb found in Dunlap for smokeless powder in gun barrel steels is the breech walls should be no less that 2/3 the greatest diameter of the chamber. So golf ball bore is 1.72" or 3 thirds. Walls are 2 thirds each, total diameter 7 thirds. 1.72/3=.57333 x 7 = 4.014" total breech diameter. If you do any lining or layering of metal you will want a vent liner. You don't need it for a solid piece of metal

If you insist on going this route, you need to find a way to make a straight cannon breech, following the cannon breech recommendations. Forget golf balls, they are a very disappointing projectile in a cannon. Look at the zinc golf balls from Rotometals. We aren't talking for distance here either. just plain shooting. Once you have shot a few golf balls and then shoot a few zinc or steel if you can find them, you will never look back.

Name dropping Lapan, good to go and will get you every where here. Have you asked uncle if he has a barrel laying around? Those old boys in the business always do...
 
#11 ·
Double D the tires just work to well in transport and shooting to ever change them . They don't rot and are almost indestructible. I do have a old slow motion video you might enjoy.The wood back stop is a concession to digging in rock hard road bed, and is a workable compromise to hydraulic recoil . I run the tires with no air pressure.
 
#14 ·
Golf balls a very consistent and uniform, no problem there.

In cannons they don't fly very well. They are unpredictable and fly all over the place. the don't fly like balls we are use to seeing after Tiger Woods wacks one down rage. I "think" it has something to do with how they are launched. The head of the golf club has flat impact on the ball and compresses the ball and launches the ball . The angle of the flat imparts direction and spin. As the velocity of the ball on impact overcomes inertia from the club and its velocity equals the velocity of the club face, the ball decompress and accelerates.

Again I "think" In a cannon when the powder ignites the pressure is spherical on the back half of the ball. The ball compresses and it may expand to fill the bore. I'm convinced it compress, and it should expand or as it's known in the sense, obturates, just as lead projectiles do in a normal gun bore. The problem is the ball sits in the bottom of the bore and obturation is not uniform rather offset. The ball may start spinning in the bore it might not.

And then for their diameter golf balls don't have a lot of mass so the loose velocity very fast.

So to answer your question golf balls are very uniform in construction, but they fly erratic out cannons. These zinc Round balls fly a lot better. https://www.rotometals.com/1-67-zinc-cannon-golf-ball-mortar/
 
#15 ·
Here is a slightly different take on golf balls in cannon.

They are unpredictable and fly all over the place. they don't fly like balls we are use to seeing after Tiger Woods whacks one down range.

This is true, although using Tiger Woods as the comparison is comparing with perfection. If you would go to your local driving range, you would see drives hooking and slicing all over the place; why? Because the golfers are not putting the uniform spin on the balls that Tiger Woods does. This is the source of the erratic performance of golf balls from cannon; inconsistent spin.

The angle of the flat imparts direction and spin.

In a cannon, there is no contacting surface to transmit through friction any specific motion to the ball. Inititally, there is contact with the unburned powder at the front of the charge which has only forward motion, but soon after, the charge is completely burned and gasified and leaking around the ball through the windage (space from a bore intentionally larger than the shot.) This gas is separating the shot from the walls of the bore so there again is no friction to impart rotation to the ball. Whether the shot eventually falls to the bottom of the bore is unknown (unlikely with a golf ball which has little mass to push downward with and equally little mass with which to resist acceleration so it is out of the bore before the pressure falls very much.) So now we have the ball in free flight in the air with no rotation; just like a knuckleball, and it moves like a knuckleball.

In past discussions of this subject, it has been proposed to take a cannon of golf ball bore and drill the top of the muzzle for a cone point set screw that could be adjusted to just snag the top surface of a golf ball to impart back spin to the ball in a uniform manner. This should not be a safety issue using golf balls as they are relatively soft and will deform upon contact. However, one needs to remember the set screw and not fire hard shot while it is intruding upon the bore (although I do not think one could load a hard shot if the screw were set for golf balls.) I have not done this due to a lack of time caused by rehabbing one of my California houses. Nor has anyone else reported conducting this experiment, so we don't know if it will address the issue of imparting spin effectively.

And then for their diameter golf balls don't have a lot of mass so they lose velocity very fast.

This is true and will limit absolute range.
 
#17 ·
If it's a more modern design you are looking for, you might want to look at what moose53 has (video above) and some of the more "modern" builds that Dominick has done, like his 19th Century naval with recoil mechanism:



These would be much more complex builds, but I think it might have more of the flavor that you are looking for. Scaled up a bit and with some carriage work, you could make a pretty cool looking erzatz French 75 that would still fall under the ATF's definition of non-gun (especially as long as you keep the primer external to the breech, as you can even make guns that fire from a case that contains powder and projectile at that point, since the ATF requires that the projectile, powder, and primer are in a self-contained cartridge before they consider it a destructive device).
 
#18 ·
I'll have to disagree with you all regarding how the golf balls fly. I'm getting about 400 yards nice and straight with 100 grains of Goex FG. The only issue I have is trying to keep an eye on it while it's flying. The first number of shots out into several hundred acres of woods with the sun in our eyes, and I couldn't figure out how far they were going. a couple days later a buddy of mine begged me to bring it over to his house on the lake and shoot some from the end of the dock. Facing due south with very clear skies, and we could watch the ball go until it disappeared then we could see the splash when it hit the water. This video is from the first day into the woods, I didn't take any videos at the lake.

I made a funnel that fits all the way into the powder chamber in the breech plug, and drilled a 3/16" vent hole for the fuse. 4140 seamless for the barrel, 4140 bar stock for the breech. Shrink fit (.003"), and welded (450 preheat, then very slow cool overnight in the oven). I stamped it max 150 grains, but I have no desire to go over 100 as it flies more than far enough.

 

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#19 · (Edited)
That's not a cannon, that is a Stokes style mortar. Mortars lob balls at lower velocity.

How did you determine 400 yards? I take pictures with my I-phone of the gun and the point of impact. I then go into the metadata of the pictures and get the coordinates and plug that into Google Earth. Then measure. I am sure there is app to do this.

Lighting is critical in seeing the ball fly-cannon or mortar-golf ball or bowling ball. In the long range test of my bowling ball mortar on a grey cloudy day the ball could be seen beyond 600 yards contrasted against the clouds until the ball dropped below the cloud horizon when it was lost from sight. During the mile shots it was bright sunny cloudy. As long as the ball could be picked up by the eye and tracked, it could be track all the way down range well in excess of a mile until dropped below the ground horizon.

Cannon shots are flat trajectory and time of flight is shorter, giving the eye less time to see them. As well as less background contrast. I have had better luck seeing them with a spotting scope.
 
#20 ·
Well, McMaster sold the tubing in either 1 foot or 3 foot lengths, and I wanted it 18"... so I bought the 3 foot length and made two of em.

I was referring to the little howitzer one when I shot it out into the lake...a shallower trajectory than the mortar. I've spent enough time looking at 300M targets that I can fairly well estimate the splash was 4oo or more...but that's just by eye. A buddy has a laser range finder, maybe we'll bring it out next time and get some more accurate data.

I don't really care how far it goes, it's a hoot and that's all I really care about!

I'm pretty happy with how the tripod came out. I kind of modeled it after a Browning 1919 tripod where the cross bar has a fixed pivot on one side, and the other side has a tube that slides up and down the leg with the cross bar pivot mounted to it.
 

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#21 · (Edited)
Looks like we have been too subtle here.

Let me be clear and specific. I feel doing this may well offend and this is not the intent. I should have been more clear in the start.

This board is about Antique black powder artillery-cannons and mortars. The Stokes mortar has been a contentious design for a long time on this board. We have a special rule for Stokes mortars. The Stokes is a post 1898 design does not fit the definition of an Antique as we define it for this board. Please read these board rules. I should have pointed you to them to start with. That is my fault, and for that I apologize.

https://www.go2gbo.com/forums/88-bl...st-artillery/81226-read-heed-board-rules.html

If you follow the link in the rules post to Stokes mortar discussion you will see the full criteria for posting a Stokes mortar. We require before you post about your Stokes Mortar that you provide us with a letter from ATF exempting your design as antique. I let your design slide as the one requirement needed is met in your design-antique ignition. I should not have.

While what you have built appears to be safely built and with fuse ignition would probably meet ATFs indention for antique, we require that letter before you post. It's in our rules.

https://www.go2gbo.com/forums/88-bl...lery/59514-stokes-mortars.html#post2056045958


The second gun you posted, put this over the top. Your guns are not with then scope of this board at this time. Provide an ATF letter for you guns exempting them as antiques and you may continue to post about them.
 
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