Shopsmith Forums

I truly appreciate the help from you guys with turning the redwood 4x4 into a cannon for the pirate ship. Crosscutting the ends with the bandsaw allowed for a nice tight lathe connection and at slow speed rounding the stock became simple. Once I started the shaping I decided to reduce the size of the project to something the 3 year olds could handle. Now it is up to their Dad to mount the cannon on the forcastle...arrrrrg.
Thanks again, Gary
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That's cool Gary. I'm sure the little ones will have fun with that.

Nice job sir, these will no doubt be the only kids on the block, with a cannon!
But...whats a cannon without cannon balls .

kalynzoo wrote:I truly appreciate the help from you guys with turning the redwood 4x4 into a cannon for the pirate ship. Crosscutting the ends with the bandsaw allowed for a nice tight lathe connection and at slow speed rounding the stock became simple. Once I started the shaping I decided to reduce the size of the project to something the 3 year olds could handle. Now it is up to their Dad to mount the cannon on the forcastle...arrrrrg.
Thanks again, Gary
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Awesome canon! It made me wonder how your boat and canon would be used with my kids. I think it might devolve into a series of water gun and water balloon fights (yes, I would participate). It also made me think of another way to get the canon into the fight. How fun would it be to be able to hook up a garden hose to a valve on the ship and run the hose through the canon?! It'd be easy to have a lever that would turn the water on/off at the canon. Then, to counter the long range of the water canon, we'd have to build a mortar system for the water balloons.... Man, I guess I need to build a pirate ship!

Jeff

OK, this reminds me of a story.....

In the days of sail, cannon balls were made of iron. They were stacked in little pyramids beside the cannon for convenience. Of course, if you just stack iron balls up, they will roll away, so a brass plate with little dimples was employed. This brass plate was called a 'monkey'. As iron and brass freeze at different rates, comes the day when it gets very cold, the brass would shrink faster than the iron, and the iron balls would not be properly supported, and would roll away. So..... wait for it.... 'cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey' means something completely different than you might have at first thought.

... and you thought school was a waste of time...