Before reading on, please read the following again and again and again without fail. The use of flash powder is SERIOUS stuff. It is one of the few compositions that you can put together with chemicals which are relatively easy to find. At the same time a primary difference between flash powder and gunpowder is that you don't have to confine flash powder to get a pretty forceful discharge. For example, we placed about a half a teaspoon full on a metal plate and set it off with a fuse. The resulting blast could be heard from some distance away. The powder was not encased in anything. Gunpowder on the other hand would simply burn. BE CAREFUL IN USING THIS STUFF. DO NOT OVERUSE AND BE AWARE THAT IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE ENCASED TO GO OFF WITH A CONCUSSION THAT HAS SURPRISING STRENGTH. Make only as much as you need for your immediate project; do not make a quantity and store it.
The following are a few cannons I found and how to use them. For the most part, I've used Thunder Valley for the chemicals and Pyrocreations for the hardware. Both are inexpensive and their service is painless and fast. (Neither one is paying me to say that! It's just the plain truth.)
The Big Daddy Thundermug is built from a solid steel stock bored with a two inch hole and stands five inches tall. We've shot it with gunpowder rammed halfway through it with a paper napkin cap and we've shot it with about 4-5 ccs of flash powder NO RAMMING AND NO CAP. The video below shows it firing with flash powder.
We've also tried something called the Little Brother Thundermug. We were so impressed by these that we now have three of them. The Little Brother is cylinder bored with a hole into a solid one and a quarter inch by 2 inch solid block of brass. It has taken all of the abuse and more than the Big Daddy counterpart at a fraction of the cost.
We've tried gunpowder but to tell you the truth, we've ended up putting about 4 ccs of flashpowder into it and setting it off. No, we haven't broken any windows, and no one has been hurt but it makes for a great sound and resulting mushroom cloud rising magestically through the tree tops. We certainly do not pack it and do not use any tissue to stop the hole--just fuse, fill, and light. The following is a video.
The final cannon I'm showing today on the site is a replica model. This one is modeled after a Civil War field cannon. To tell you the truth, we all ducked for some solid cover the first time we shot it. It just doesn't look like it would withstand a lot of pressure. But the thing is made from gun steel and has stood the test of what we gave it.
We filled it with 5 ccs of gunpowder and packed it tight with tissue wading. From the video below it may look like it totally disintegrated but it only jumped in the air and landed two feet away. It was unscathed and ready for action again.
We shot it three times within 15 minutes and the cannon looked clean and untouched. We also experimented by using about 1 cc of Titanium with the 5 ccs of gunpowder. It was night and provided a great sparkling show. What fun! Check out the video below. If you are using Quick Time, put it on pause right before the blast and press the right arrow key to go through it frame by frame. It's great.
For formulas for gunpowder and flash powders, I'll provide that information on this site in a later blog as soon as we've finished doing our research for the best ways of creating the combinations. In the mean time check out some of the books that I've linked into this blog. I'm trying to hit sales on Amazon when they're available to reduce the prices as much as possible.
My next blog is going to be about smoke. It should be up in about a week. Look for it then or sooner.
