How to Make Wooden Cannon Barrels

Functioning wooden cannon barrels provide an attention-grabbing, inexpensive tool useful for special effects and public displays.

Knowing how to make wooden cannon barrels gives you a skill that can be useful for museum exhibit displays, special promotional events, and movie and theater special effects teams. Using just a little skill and a few materials one can easily make functioning wooden cannon barrels. Functioning wooden cannon barrels provide an attention-grabbing, inexpensive tool that can be used in special effects, promotional halftime events at spectator games, and in museum exhibit displays.

Things You'll Need

• Drill
• 2-inch boring drill bit with 4-foot extension
• 2-inch sanding drill bit with 4-foot extension
• 3-foot-long 4-by-4 board
• Wet washing cloth
• Compressed air pump with ½-inch hose and ½-inch-diameter tubular sprayer
• 2 sawhorses with clamp
• ½-inch drill bit 2 inches in length
• 1 ½-inch 4-foot-long wooden dowel
• Saw

Instructions

Constructing the Barrel

1. Place the 4-by-4 board into the clamp on the sawhorses on the 4-inch side and secure the 4-by-4 in the clamps. Each end of the 4-by-4 should be sticking out of the clamp.

2. Drill a ½-inch hole into the side of the 4-by-4 at a point 6 inches in from the end of the 4-by-4. This creates the vent hole on the cannon tube.

3. Drill a 2-inch hole diameter bore from the front end of the 4-by-4 toward the rear until you see sawdust coming out of the hole that was drilled. This will occur when the boring bit has drilled into the area where the vent hole meets the bore chamber being created in this step.

4. Run the 2-inch sanding drill bit down the bore hole. This will smooth out the bore of the cannon.

5. Cut off each corner of the 4-by-4 running from the front end to the rear end of it to create an 8-sided cannon barrel. This completes the cannon barrel.

Using the Cannon Barrel

1. Secure the cannon barrel in the clamp on the sawhorses.

2. Push the wet washing cloth down the cannon barrel using the 1 ½-inch dowel as a ramrod.

3. Remove the dowel from the cannon barrel.

4. Insert the ½-inch-diameter tubular sprayer from the air compressor into the vent hole on the cannon barrel.

5. Spray compressed air into the cannon using the tubular sprayer. This will fire the cannon and send the wet washing cloth out of the barrel.

References

• Google Books: Stories of American Life and Adventure
• Google Books: A History of Firearms
• Hawkeye Engineer: Spud Cannon