You fired the last wadding shot at too low of an angle 26° degree. Range loss increases below 27° degree. The optimum range is achieved at ~35° degree angle due to air resistance. In your previous video the barrel appeared very rough & rusted, so you should sand it smoother & wax it. The ball is very loose & needs a sabot. You should be able to get it to go a ~mile then.

The most efficient angle is 45 degrees of elevation. The last shot was 26 degrees.

45 degrees, 2ft longer barrel, aluminum foil wadding, 2 lbs powder... will easily get you a mile. Great Videos!

I’m Blown away that this channel doesn’t have more views, keep it up that cannon is sick!!

BTW, I looked it up for the charge needed for a 16 pound ball. There is no hard and fast rule, but typically, you would use 25% of the projectile weight for Goex cannon grade or 2FA. So 4 pounds of powder. That should get you over 1 mile at 45° elevation. (Maybe need a stronger pipe.) Modify your cannon pipe for a touch hole. Pack the powder in a cotton bag, ram it down. Use cotton batting for a patch. Ram it. Add your bowling ball. Ram it. Insert safety fuse in the touch hole after piercing the power charge bag. Use enough for at least 10 seconds or more to retreat to a safe distance. Light fuse and RUN to safety.

Wow! What a shot. Congrats, I'm looking forward to the next.

well, this looks fun. Fun to blast big round things a half a mile away, but also, having the whole gang there just seems like such a good time for everyone involved. I know that when I was a kid, I woulda loved to have been on one of those chase dirtbikes. Heck, I would probably enjoy it now too.

My dad shot black powder for decades, a Polished and clean barrel is the key to get consistent accuracy. Shooting for distance is fun and relaxed, try to hit a object is very vary hard. Things like a few grams of powder less or over, dirty barrel, gust of wind, the holes in the ball in different orientations, getting the Jeep exactly in the same spot as the last shot. Great video very fun to watch. Thanks for sharing.

Wadding was the right idea ,, but the 26 degree angle of attack wasn't , the 45 degree angle was better for range

Great video sir, was waiting since a long time.

theres a guy on here that has hit 3 miles with his bowling ball canon

Good wholesome family fun. Thanks for sharing!

New subscriber from Centralia, WA! Keep up the good work!

New subscriber, thanks to the collaboration with the Slo-mo guys and How Ridiculous.

I was going to ask about the wadding, but i figured id let it play and, as expected, you gave the answer i thought you might. Excellent video!👍

Needs more views . The lord bowling ball cannon is pleased .

There is something pleasant about firing 16lb bowling balls 👍

Hey, just got here from How Ridiculous. Looking forward to more videos. Now I'm a subscriber

Very informative thanks for a great video.

Just great ,keep goin. I'll need oNE of those. 4 motherinlaw's home.gracias for ur videos.

All you'd need is the muzzle velocity, ball drag coefficient, and local weather conditions and with a ballistic calculator you could factor the best barrel angle to achieve the most distance per a given charge.

Thanks for a great video which has provided some very interesting black powder ballistics information, as well as great entertainment. Do you have any idea of muzzle velocity? My guess is 700 to 800 FPS. With an accurate figure I would love to know what the muzzle energy is.

Would be cool to see you guys blast a capped 55 gallon drum of water. Like your other vids, this one was excellent!

Ohhhh boy. This, is gonna be good.

You know, this is awesome.

This is exactly how Napoleon trained his artillery before heading off to Moscow.

I forgot to mention what a great video that was. I hope you attempt a mile shot. And please put it on U-tube.

Now that’s entertainment!👍

Awesome keep it coming

Enjoyed the video, thanks for putting it up. I would suggest that when you have changed the barrel for a somewhat longer one, I would suggest a wooden disc cut just shy of the bores diameter with a dished to fit against the ball held in place with some light glue (not strong stuff as you want it to separate as soon as it leave the barrel - watch out though as it can fly off at odd angles. one of the things that is limiting your range is the jeep, if you watch bach you will see the jeep go down on its suspension before the ball leaves the barrel, this lowers the angle and absorbs a lot of energy that could be used to propel the ball. look at old artillery cannons and mortars and they are on ridged frames. Good luck with the record and try a frangible containerl filled with steel ball bearings or nuts fired horizontally against some wooden shuttering at about 100 yards to see the effect cannister shot would have. get the search crew to paint some soldier outlines on it in old line regiment formation for the woo effect!

I think that you should have always fired with a 45 degree angle for maximum distance rather than varying it for each firing. Any angle other than 45 degrees is less than optimum for distance

I use to build cannons 50 years ago I used news paper for wadding. I shot a 4 lb piece of steel round like a piston 3 1/2 miles at a 45 degree angle.

Tell me what you think! What should we do next with the Bowling Ball Cannon?! Thank you for watching! ~Craig

It is super critical, when shooting Blackpowder from any tube, from pistol to cannon, that there be as near a ZERO air gap between the charge and sabot/projectile as possible. Any air gap creates a shockwave induced over-pressure that can turn the very stoutest barrel into a pip boom.

Have a Bowling Ball Catcher !!!

Maximum distance is achieved with the barrel set at 45 degrees. When set at 0 degrees (parallel to the ground) whatever distance the projectile travels will be 10 times greater at 45 degrees.

Great Video

Yankee doodle playing while you shoot a bowling ball out of a cannon. I have never been more proud to be an American.

Optimum angle for distance is 33 degree. Most bowling ball cannons are made from used 'K' bottles, so line your barrel with a 'K' gas bottle.

it's awesome, but there's a problem: after a lot of shots the geep may be destroyed by the recoil, why don't try to put the cannon a little further on the geep and try to put a big spring as a recoil control system, it can be usefull and really cool to see when shoot with it it might be difficult because you would have to change the position and shape of the gun but it can be done

Build a castle breeching cannon. aim at a cinder block wall or small structure. Test accuracy. or a 30 foor by 30 foot wall.

That 2 lb black powder shot of a 16 pound bowling ball that went 4099 feet is very impressive.

Lol... i was commenting about wadding and youve just said it 😅 . This is soo cool 👍

Beats the hell out of Chuckin pumpkins. Is there a competition yet?

Great video! Please keep your cannon on the other side of the Montana mountains. Looks a little dangerous. :)

You need a sabot. A round wooden block behind the bowling ball. If you use one, you will lose less wind windage and you'll easily pass the mile.

It’s back!

To achieve maximum range on a mortar or cannon I always thought elevating the tube to 45 degrees was optimal. Why did you use 40 degrees?

I'm a bit late on this one, but i have an idea. In which financial realms are we speaking, if you would take a higher grade, or thicker steel pipe with more length, to increase pressure in the chamber and maintain longer? During WW2 the range of artillery and AT cannons increased significantly when adding barrel length. Cheers!

Would like to know how far when the ball is slightly smaller than the barrel .

sub here from the slow mo guys and how ridiculous. you have got to make more videos with this thing.

Thanks very fun and enjoyable. My concern is that as you add more powder, then at some point you will break the ball into pieces before you get to the one mile distance. Guess time will tell, be safe!

We did the same thing but the cannon is a lot bigger. And instead of bowling balls, we shoot things like appliances and car parts. We just sent a dryer about a mile and a half. Pretty cool.

The real deal is to use sack cloth soaked in burnt oil for wadding and oil the barrel of the cannon as well .That will allow for more powder and your on to a supremo.

Cool video

Imagine firing this cannon inside a real bowling alley. What a great way to score a strike.

I don’t understand why you shot at 26 degrees with the wadding when the others were at 40-45. Won’t that affect it? Ideal is 40/45 no?

If you’re going for distance attempt the record with the first or second shot. Before the metal used for your barrel has a chance to fatigue.

On an overcast day like this testing had, you need to paint the ball yellow to pick it up better in the sky. That's why they make yellow gold balls for. Red is for the bright sky because it makes it look blacker against it.

You should try a angles from say 20° up to 45° in 5° increments with wadding but don't fill the barrel, just enough to prevent gases escaping

Thats a very good video! Now i have a really stupid idea and with the risk involved i doubt it will ever be done (unless there is a 10 minute fuse) to basically point the cannon directly towards the sky! Im a dad of 3 and thats my inner child telling me its dangerous but im genuinely curious to the outcome and the trouble is safety and also being able to track the height it reaches, also theres the risk to the cannon and whether enough propulsion will generate.

Lets see, the Army has/had a M110 howitzer, mounted on a mobile chassis, sorta like yours. The projectile is about 8in, close to your 16lb BB. They can lob a M106HE shell that weights about 200lbs about 10 miles. Barrell length is about 10ft. Something to shoot for? Pardon the pun.

Use the cloth around the ball like a muzzle loading rifle would , you would need a ramer then to insure good contact with the powder .

The reason for not using wadding was the barrel was just a length of pipe. Would welding 5 ribs of 1/2" strips of steel the length of the barrel stiffen the barrel?

I know that area. I also have jeep parts for you. Are you going to go back out there and go for more than a mile?

My bowling ball mortars are made from K size oxygen tanks. One is quite close fitting & out shoots the other one easily. I've been considering fins. I've come up with fins on 3 of my smaller mortars, an 81mm, 76.2mm & 70mm. I fire them backwards fin first. It goes about 100 ft. Or so then turns around & goes like hell. Right away i started getting nice groups & got first place at our cannon shoot. They are fired with shotgun primers, one is fired with musket caps & a lanyard. Dixie gun works has cannon locks for this. Its safer & more reliable than fuze😊

That's a pretty incredible distance:)

fun experiment. I'd echo the other commenter that you performance isn't bad but could easily be improved with some barrel prep and a sabot. It's significantly underpowered for the ball's weight, smooth bore 16lbers were typically fired with `6LB of powder, though you'd need something to manage recoil as I don't think your jeep will take it... cannon walls are very thing as well too so might want to just call it good before Ian accident occurs!

drill a core plug and insert a tracking device also use a cloth bag packed with the gunpowder the bag acts as the waddage. In the old days they used straw as the waddage and up the gund powder to 2,5 pounds in the bag and pack in the barrel.

my buddy's a cannoneer We've had so much fun on the farm aiming at old cars. We made our own balls. Your bowling ball is quiet the challenge.. fun stuff.

Heat up the bowling ball, then melt beeswax, coat the ball with the wax then smooth down the wax to exactly the diameter of the cannons barrel. That way the wax will maximize the effect of the expanding gas on the ball (without blowing up the cannon)

Have you tried using a golf ball tracker?

I wonder if any of those bowling balls went supersonic (Mach 1), around 1,125 fps at sea level.

Do you need a license/permit to build and shoot that awesome thing?

Get some drone shots of that thing in the air moving

That pipe scares me. I'd have to reinforce it substantially.

Looks like so much fun! I'm thinking that probably wasn't the best method to use wadding in there, but then again, always safety first. If the barrel is just a heavy-duty piece of pipe, what's it current rating for bursting strength? I guess you could load up something like a mesh garbage can with a bunch of tennis balls or golf balls, and see if you have the largest shotgun in the world :) Mark Rober, on his KZfaq channel, made a large air-powered T-shirt cannon to see how far he could launch a tee-shirt; you might be able to launch an entire tuxedo even further. And learning about ballistics and trajectories was always a blast in school!

Bowling ball cannon! Why in hell didnt I think of that?

Proper wadding is not a rag stuffed into the barrel on top of the powder charge. You have to wrap the projectile in the wadding, only to the length of the projectile. No excess wadding needed. At the same time, the wadding needs to seal between the barrel and the projectile. In a sense, putting the bowling ball in a cardboard box, then ramming it down the barrel would do. Thanks for the video. Jon

Why did you divert from the 45 degrees? That should be optimal.

any estimates on muzzle velocity?

fire at 45 degree with 2 pounds of powder and thank me later

very well thought out, i feel ya stressed the tube though. im a mechanical engineer, hands on plus a welder. i think, ya need a new tube and no wadding. perhaps a simple recoil cradle with a total loss water system, cheap and no pollution.

If you want high capacity go to a sch. 160 pipe and Flange. Then make sure you bolt all the holes. I see you only had bolts in half the flange for this test.

you seem new mexican bro. god bless america. 6:18 my goodness look how huge that horse is, as big as the cars that thing!

Brave of you to try it with the wadding, with something that isn't exactly a cannon barrel you don't know how it would handle that pressure haha

I love how exploding shit and sending bowling balls off into the distance is called science now.

I am not sure if it will work but how about a GPS device installed and just drill and adjust weight to compensate wish I was there looks like fun

Wow !!! There used to be, and maybe still is, a group that fires bowling ball cannons near Albany, Oregon. There was also a group of cannoneers near Madras, Oregon. Their targets included vans, buses, and there was a rumor of one group that shot a motorhome. An IBC Tote from 275 t0 300 gallons would be awesome and ought to make a spectacular video !!!

Cool!!!! 😎

Piękne zabawy 😉😁🤠

Big fun... I'm concerned about pressures in your tube exceeding it's strength. Be safe.

Counts as a technical?

this is great love your videos! You can take out a helicopter or a plane with this!

Thinking of making my third or fourth - this time to shoot BILLIARD BALLS, May not live to finish it however. Thinking if you seeking range that you need to search out a heavier barrel. Or Parrot Rifle it as far as manufacturing, That can get tricky, finding and matching of old piping. Stay Safe HAVE FUN

are there fingerholes drillrd in the ball ?

If you use bigger power loud you need a bigger jeep. Use weights in front are in back of jeep were ever its needed. it will help so much kick back so much, I think right.

why 26 degrees?

Obviously the bowling ball must be pretty good matter👍

You kept changing one of the most important variables - angle.