In high school my buddy (the doctor's son) found a formula for gun powder. The first batch wouldn't even burn but he kept trying until he came up with some pretty hot stuff. We threaded a plug into a two inch pipe and drilled a hole for a fuse and bolted our "cannon" to the forward thwart (front seat) of the good doctor's old, semi-rotten, 14 foot rowing skiff and rowed it up Fly Creek as far as we could go.
We rammed home a double handful of the gunpowder and another handful of nuts and bolts, inserted a fuse we pulled out of an M-80 firecracker and lit it off. Boom! The six inch pine tree we aimed at went down but we failed to consider the effects of recoil. The recoil broke the boat in half and had us all in the water and doomed to a long walk out of there and a long explanation to the good doctor.
tubatooter1940 wrote:In high school my buddy (the doctor's son) found a formula for gun powder. The first batch wouldn't even burn but he kept trying until he came up with some pretty hot stuff. We threaded a plug into a two inch pipe and drilled a hole for a fuse and bolted our "cannon" to the forward thwart (front seat) of the good doctor's old, semi-rotten, 14 foot rowing skiff and rowed it up Fly Creek as far as we could go.
We rammed home a double handful of the gunpowder and another handful of nuts and bolts, inserted a fuse we pulled out of an M-80 firecracker and lit it off. Boom! The six inch pine tree we aimed at went down but we failed to consider the effects of recoil. The recoil broke the boat in half and had us all in the water and doomed to a long walk out of there and a long explanation to the good doctor.
ahhhhhhhhhh, to be young foolish and bulletproof again!
New Breed, Old Breed! It doesn't matter so long as it's the Marine Breed!
I was not a member, but my undergrad had an active KA fraternity chapter. They were actually careful and used appropriate blank loads to fire off their cannon for their occasional sanctioned celebratory events. We in the dorms actually enjoyed it, because the particular events were usually events like open rush where everybody on campus was invited. So, cannon fire = free beer.
It's too bad someone either put the wrong load in and/or had a damaged or corroded cannon that hurt a couple of guys at some college @ 1981, because after that, the entire nationwide KA organization internally banned the cannon firings.
