July 4th
2008 July 4
As promised…
Black walnut hub, cherry spokes.
Tool kit – fuses, and charges.
Loading the charge. 4 ounces, RS - FFG equivalent.
Tamping the charge.
Skull and crossed pipe wrenches.
Lit fuse.
Target – 100 yards.
One snooker ball sized hole. Three ball in the side pocket!
Looking back at the cannon.
The smoking gun.
I stayed at the house with the dogs, and got some work done in the garden.
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Food Renegade
Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op
Cool…
why did i just experience a bevis and butthead type laugh?
Sigh of pure happiness here…gotta call the son so he can see it!
The coolest thing I’ve seen in a while. I’m green with envy. Guess I’ll have to go and shoot my shotguns to try to help me cope….
Chris
Wow, that black walnut paired with cherry takes my breath away! I love the way they used to understand exactly which woods performed best for which kinds of stress, and used them accordingly.
I’ve discovered I have a lot of both on my property; the trick will be to figure out how to incorporate some logs into my building plans. Right now my planning is limited to thinking that some of the smaller that must be cleared (either for building space or to give space to their larger cousins) would make mighty fine railings for a loft.
My BIL shakes his head and says they are too hard to debark by hand, and no one locally does it. I still think there must be a way…
That was great! I definitely will have to show my husband this post; he will appreciate the workmanship as well as enjoy the cannon blast.
Thanks again for your interesting and informative posts! I live in the suburbs of L.A., not a cow in sight, but I always seem to learn something from you. Your recent post ( I think titled Low Impact High Impact) has me thinking about the weeds around our little acre. It never occurred to me there might be a reason for them, other than I didn’t pull them up well enough last year! And the chickens in the cowpies! How interesting to this city girl!
My goal is to produce more and more of our food – my neighbors already think I am odd, but funny how they leave my backyard gardens and say, “well, I am going back to reality now – time to leave Little House in the Prairie behind. It’s so peaceful here…. like another world….”
It must be like heaven in your world…
Tyler and his buddy both enjoyed your video. Thanks very much for posting it. “Cool” was their response. We need one of those!!
It is a beautiful piece…..such craftsmanship.
just exactly how big is a snooker?!
i absolutely cannot show this to my husband or it’ll be the next thing we own.
That was cool, thanks for sharing. I can’t wait to show hubby, he’ll get a kick out of that for sure! ~Kim
Woody, are you sure it wasn’t a Ren and Stimpy laugh?
Threecollie, they were pretty happy, a couple of the guys from the wagon class came and had a blast. Much more fun than puttering around in the woodshop.
Chris, Shotguns! Coping! Are you crazy, you know how expensive shells are these days LOL Bet you thought I was going to say something else… Black powder is much cheaper.
Hayden, I have to admit, until that thing had wheels, I hated it. We always had to lug it around, and it was too heavy. Now that the woodwork is done, it really is beautiful. I should have been nicer about the whole thing.
Your BIL might be right, but he should know how determined you are. DH built his log house using the swedish scribe method which is chinkless and fits each log to the preceding one. The hardest part for him was the peeling. One load of logs was cut at the right time for the bark to slip easily, and the other was cut just a little later. It really made a difference in the ease of peeling and how the logs looked afterwards. But, like you he had a vision and didn’t let the headshaking deter him. It was a labor of love, and yours will be too.
The key to any of those skills is learning the character of the tree you are utilizing. The Foxfire series may have the info you need.
Ingrid, Hi – you are innovating right where you are and that is exciting. It sounds like you have an open mind and that is so important these days. You can grow a lot of food on your acre. There is no need for large places, it’s more important to utilize what you have, and it sounds like your neighbors have realized how special you are making your place. I love the comment about going back to reality! Your place sounds like reality to me!
Debi, Kristine and Kim – I guess I should have put in a warning, DO NOT SHOW THIS TO THE MEN OF THE HOUSE!
Boys and their toys…
A snooker ball is 2 1/8″ He can get the balls for free and they are easy to find in the pasture. He made some plaster ones but they were damp and disintegrated in midair.
I could hardly keep a straight face in front of my daughter, when he came in and announced that “My balls are moldy and damp – I’m afraid my cannon won’t shoot properly!”
On rare occasions I can bite my tongue, this was one of those times.
I’ve been toying (no pun intended) with building a cannon for years. This video will make it happen. As kristine above says, GOTTA HAVE ONE!!!!