Small brass Cannon

[Skinny 1950]

I was sorting through a pile of brass plumbing scrap the other day at work and came across a nifty little yellow brass cannon. It has a nice antique looking patina on it but the touch hole was drilled off center. I am going to fire some black powder in it with a paper wad and see what happens. It is only 7-3/8 inches long and I don't know if it is a copy of some known gun or not.
Here are some pictures:

 

[panda1]

Cool, like small brass cannon, like BIG brass cannon better!!!

 

[IMagius]

That's awesome! Why do I never find stuff like this in scrap piles? Would be interesting to find out how old it is.

 

[wr.sainsbury]

brass cannon

looks to be modern copy of older piece-obviously. off-center touch hole should not be the problem but it looks to be rather large for the fuse commonly avail. would suggest no more than 20 grns of fffg to try it out. should stand that easily. if you can set an insert into the touch hole to get it down to 1/8" or so. regards

 

[ckid]

The touch hole looks way too large as previously mentioned...

 

[Skinny 1950]

I am thinking of threading the existing hole and filling it with a brass screw which would be cut off and filed flush. A new 1/8 inch hole could be drilled in the center below the crest. There was a wire across the bore about an inch forward of the touch hole,at first I thought it was a piece of drill rod intended to prevent loading but came to realize that it was soft wire used to suspend the casting core for the bore. I managed to remove this wire with a sharp rod and filed the bore smooth. I am going to wait until Halloween and then fire some wadding out of it.

 

[tiriaq]

Nowadays, a cast cored bore is not considered good practice for ml cannons. The center of the casting is hidden in the wall of the barrel, and voids or honeycombs there could be dangerous.
A large touch hole can provide a margin of safety - vents off pressure.
If you decided to pop off a salute, I'd leave the vent as it is, use a light charge, and little wadding, and not firmly rammed at that.
If the gun were mine, and I really wanted to shoot it, I'd drill and ream the bore larger, then sleeve it with a 4130 CrMo seamless steel liner with its own breechplug, bushing and redrilling the touch hole as part of the job.

Years ago a friend had one of "Barney's Cannons" .50 guns on a naval carriage. Cast iron rig. It had the power of a .45 pistol, would blow a hole through both sides of an oil drum. Definitely not a toy.