The Missing Olean Activity...but no Vids!

I was going to post some videos of what we were doing out in Olean, but unfortunately; Blogger (the Google website that hosts this blog) is having errors uploading videos.  I researched it and it seems everyone that is trying to load videos is having this problem.  Google is aware of this problem (allegedly) and is working on it.  In the meantime, I'm afraid you'll just have to do with some pics;

First up; some of the ammo we were using.  "Ammo?  What do you mean; ammo??"

Ta da!  Bryan's cannon!!

It's a custom made cannon (I forgot who it was that made it for him.  It was a friend of Mark's.)  Bryan has this whole process down to a science.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, though.  Mark, Mary, Rob, Natalie and myself were kicking back on Thursday night and Mark tells us that Bryan was coming by the next morning to fire it off.  Well, far be it from me to not cause a bit of good natured fun, so I began texting Bryan, telling him that  Mark was doubtful that he'd show up at all, let alone on time.  Bryan, never one to back down from a challenge, assured us that he'd set off a reveille report promptly at 8am the next morning.

8am came and we were sitting about the breakfast table, and no cannon fire.  I was just about to grab my phone to start a new round of good natured insults, when; BOOM!!!  The house rattled, the back yard was instantly filled with smoke, and the echoes were bouncing off of the hills behind us.  We all ran outside, and there was Bryan with a big shit-eating grin on his face.  Good Morning!!

He'd come prepared, too!  With premade black-powder charges and a whole firing kit consiting of a rammer, cloth for wadding, a priming iron and gun oil for a good pressure seal around the shot, he was ready for action.  We started out by firing some golf balls into the hills behind Mark and Mary's house and we marveled at how f'ing cool this was!  Man, this thing is loud!!!

But we needed something more to shoot at.  Ah-ha!  Mark had a couple of old, discarded 4-panel wooden doors that we can try hitting...

Our first attempt...we were going to use the steel ball and we didn't want the shot to go to waste, so we we took our time to sight things carefully...  When we were confident that we were dialed in on the doors, we lit the fuse and jumped back... BOOM!!!!!

The doors didn't even move.  What the...we missed?!?!

Walking down to check the doors, we found that we hadn't missed at all.  In fact, we were just about dead-center on one of the doors!

The ball had been going so fast, the door hadn't even flinched when the ball blasted through it.  We'd expected it to expode the door, but the ball was going just way too fast.

We located the ball's path on the far side of the stream.  It'd carved an easily recognizable trench through the weeds and grasses, but we couldn't find where it'd actually struck the ground.  The best guess we could come up with was that each time it began to graze the ground, it'd 'bounced' back up and continued on, deep into the tangle of brambles and assorted overgrowth.

Ok, the doors weren't offering enough resistance.  We needed something more.  Behold; a barrel, filled with water and its cover sealed tightly!  Surely that would give us quite the explosion!

We each took turns sighting the cannon, but success was elusive.  Here, you can see we were close...quite close, in fact, but no luck.  4 shots, 4 near-misses (the 4th one is midway down, on the right side of the barrel).

Bryan thought maybe if we tried a bolo style of shot, we might have better success.  So we drilled two golf balls and secured them together with a section of weed trimmer line.  It was a grand plan...but it threw the trajectory way, WAY off, and the only success we had was against the innocent water hose that was laying on the ground between the cannon and the doors...

Whoops...  Ok, back to shooting just one ball at a time.

We only had one steel ball left, and we had to make it count.  I started out and did my best to sight it directly on the barrel.  Then Bryan got in there and made a couple finite adjustments until he was satisfied.  It was time to light the fuse and cross our fingers...

SUCCESS!!  We scored a direct hit!!  The barrel didn't launch into the air as much as I'd thought it would, but it sure did explode!  Water went everywhere, and the doors were knocked backward into the stream bed.  (The fact that they had old paint flaking off of them anyway, did much to enhance the effect of debris being exploded everywhere.)

Here, you can see where the ball struck the barrel.  The force of the steel ball striking the outside was countered with the force of the water - now under pressure due to the top being sealed - and the shock waves from the impact bouncing around inside the barrel.  The ring around where the ball passed through the side almost looks a bit melted in spots.  It's probably more of a compression effect than actual heat/melting.  And just look at those cracks in the plastic!

Bryan definitely stepped things up this time around!  I sent a pic to McCarthy and he (of course) wants to build one.  And I (of course) am completely on board with this plan!  I've got measurements and pictures and we'll have to get together soon and see if we can get a plan into place.

I really wish I could've loaded the videos!!  The pictures don't begin to convey the sheer power and NOISE of this thing!  I guess if you want to see this thing in action, you'll just have to come out to Olean with me next time.

And there you go; the Olean pig roast trip of 2014.  It was a fantastic time, with fantastic people.

I wish I was back out there right now!

Ride Hard, Take Chances