Yesterday… I saw a homemade butane-powered cannon shoot a saboted blueberry muffin across my lawn.
– Tamara K
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Why I adore the United StatesJuly 6th, 2006 |
 24 comments to Why I adore the United States |
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A friend of mine has a small brass cannon, fueled with acetylene, that can handle a golf ball.
They fire it out in the woods, and nobody’s found one of the golf balls yet.
We use Aqua-Net (an alcohol-based hairspray) for our potato cannon, but it’s nowhere near noisy enough. I have seen little cannons firing blank shotgun shells & would love to get hold of one.
I was appalled to learn recently that the cherry bombs and M-80’s that were the delight of my youth are no longer available in the USA, not even in New Hampshire.
I have a friend who had constructed a small cannon out of a pair of Pringles potato-chip cans. He’d fill the can will Axe deodorant, put a small plastic soda bottle in the the can, and light the fumes. (After taking the batteries out of his dorm room smoke detector, of course.)
So do we send flowers or bring grapes
To your ex dorm friend Blog Jones?
Proper manly Name by the way. Jones that is.
In the seventies, in Canada, we used to build cannons out of beer cans. The cans at that time had a cap at both ends (unlike the current deep-drawn cans), and fit a tennis ball perfectly. Cut the tops and bottoms off of five beer cans (leaving the stiffening rings in place), tape them together with sturdy tape to make a tube. and close the bottom off with a sixth can that has the top removed but the bottom still in place. Punch a small hole in the bottom, squirt in your fuel of choice (lighter fluid works well), drop a tennis ball in the top, shake, and ignite with a match through the hole in the bottom. I strongly recommend that you support the cannon some way other than by hand.
I tested on Tuesday an incredibly simple home-made firecracker design. Take a plastic soda bottle, poke a small hole near the bottom. Insert a few inches of fuse. Fill the bottom of the bottle with black powder to a depth of 1/2 to 3/4 inch, enough to cover the end of the fuse. Cap it. Set it down outside on a non-flammable surface. Light the fuse. Run to a safe distance (30 feet). BANG!!! As loud as a bullet from a big rifle. Echoes off the trees.
I set off two of them. Couldn’t find a trace of either bottle except a couple pieces of label.
I’ll note that a fellow in Bethel, VT was killed on July 4 from an exploding pipe cannon. The news is suspiciously short on details, other than that he was standing less than 30 ft from the detonation.
I too miss the old M-80’s, though I’ll note my little brother became a domestic terrorist by dunking a lit M-80 in the toilet at his high school back in the 1980’s. The hydrostatic shock blew out the wall between the mens room and the hallway. Of course, those were the good old days before the present anti-weapons hysteria (pre-HIV as well), and he was only suspended from school for a month. Mum was appalled, saying, “You are not going to spend the month watching TV at home.” So he spent the month painting the Senior Citizens Center that mum managed… the local lefties were appalled at mum’s cruel and unusual punishment, tried to cause trouble since he wasn’t getting paid amounted to “slavery” and “child abuse”.
These days he could expect years in maximum security…
That all being said, some friends of mine who work at the local post office processing center (military vets all) have what we call “AK Days” around the 4th. BYOM(achine)G(uns), BYOB(ombs), BYOM(ortars), BYOH(and)G(renades)… What, you are shocked that postal workers are so well armed???? 😉
Gunfire is the sound of freedom……God Bless America
I was appalled to learn recently that the cherry bombs and M-80’s that were the delight of my youth are no longer available in the USA, not even in New Hampshire.
Dunno about that. I went looking for them back on the 3rd, and while I was unable to locate any for my own use, I certainly heard a few go off.
Or maybe the unavaliability of M-80s has resulted in people around here switching to dynamite.
Ho, ho. Very witty! Perry must love these trolls…
Education, education, education….
*Yawn*
“Perry must love these trolls”…I dunno John, I think the original quote, taken in a non-sarcastic way, has a certain fizz about it!!!
Hope everyone enjoyed their July 4. One of these days I may turn up at one, dressed in a British redcoat. (Only joking).
And this coming from a guy who appears to have the most boring looking blog in the western world?
One last recipe: Take a plastic jar with a secure screw-on top. I used a mayonnaise jar because of the good wide mouth. Insert dry ice, screw the top on securely, walk away looking innocent. There isn’t even any gunpowder residue or burn mark to make the cops’ job easier when they come around making their inquiries.
Your leftover dry ice is ideal for martinis, as it does not dilute the gin.
One MRE heater pack and about 2 inches of water in a 16 oz plastic soda bottle works well too. Just remember to screw the top on tight.
Of course, 2 packs are better than one.
I thought the comment about gunfire being the sound of freedom was sincere.
It reminded me of the bumper sticker a friend of mine, a former fighter pilot, had on his truck. It said: Jet Noise, Sound of Freedom.
It was meant unironically.
The sound of free people shooting their guns is the same thing.
Same thing with detonating fireworks. The best thing is they are supposed to be illegal in my suburb near Chicago, but the din of the things all night on the 4th and into the wee hours (described here) showed a refreshingly robust anarcho-libertarian disdain for such stupid nannyish rules.
< a href="http://www.airshow.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?page=1/PROD/D/DB12">Here is one version of the Jet Noise bumper sticker. My friend had a different one. He was a Navy pilot, and would not have had a bumper sticker with an F-16 on it.
Well, you’d have to fire the muffin in a sabot, or else it would disintegrate upon ignition…
[/pedant]
Untill you’ve seen a 70lb anvil blown over hundred feet straight up (400 grains of black powder), you haven’t lived.
Things that go BOOM! are cool.
Kim,
How was this charge tamped? I just mentioned this to my father, a retired Sturm, Ruger & Co engineer, and he thought that 400 grains of black powder was more than a bit light to loft such a load that high. Did you leave out a zero?
If the citizens have the right to bear arms.
Otherwise, it’s the sound of tyranny and genocide.
I don’t pack heat personally but appreciate all those who do! *high five*
Growing up in N. Ireland fireworks were illegal . I had endless hours of fun making my own with the bags I would fill in the chemistry class in school. Got me in trouble with my folks on more than one occasion too.
sigh
For all the statism one can find in the United States there is far more statism in Britain.
Also I suspect that (unlike in the days of such Anglophile American writers as Irving Babbit, Paul Elmor Moore and T.S. Eliot) Amerian society is stronger than British society.
If I am right social decay will be far more obvious in Britain than in the United States over the next few years.
By the time of the great games of 2012 Britian should proved the United States (and the rest of the world) a very clear example of a failed society.
This may be the last useful function Britian will serve.
Here in my part of the Midwest, police have a slightly different attitude towards firearms than you UK types are used to.
On Sunday, two days before the 4th, we had a suspicious woodchuck between our barn and wellhouse. Suspicious as in “Rabies?”
Not sure if the health department or whoever was tracking or testing suspected cases, I live caught it with the help of a canoe paddle and live-trap and had my brother call the sherrif’s department. A couple of officers arrived, looked at the animal in the trap and agreed something was sure wrong but that there was no procedure except to destroy the animal.
They then asked me to go get a gun to shoot it with. It turns out their choice of firepower is a 40cal sidearm or double ‘O’ in a twelve gauge. We really didn’t want to atomize a biohazard so could I please go get something in a smaller caliber. Preferably a 22 rimfire rifle.
I have my grandfather’s 22, but no ammo. Hey, it’s a keepsake, alright! I haven’t fired it in years. They finally dispatched it with the shotgun.
I talked to our township police chief about it later. He thought the symptoms sounded like distemper.
Even to me though, it did seem a little strange having police officers telling me to go get a gun.