Adventures with Black Powder
by Jim Taylor

My earliest memories of black powder smoke are of my Dad shooting some black powder loads in his old .45 Colt. The boom and belch of smoke was truly impressive. Seems we always had some around. When I was about 8 or 9 I can remember Dad blowing a stump with a home-made black powder "stump blaster". The concussion was heard and felt for miles. Of course this exposure to black powder at an early age affected me, traumatising my inner self and making me want to create my own clouds of powder smoke.

I also purchased an original box of UMC .44-40 factory loads. Balloon-head cases and black powder. I do not know how old they were but most of them fired. A few, when you pulled the trigger, would go "HISSSSS-BANG" - sometimes delaying as long as 15 seconds or so. But it helped your follow-through and sight picture training, holding on the target and praying the cartridge fired soon.

It was about this time that I discovered you could make some really neat explosions with black powder. And you did not have to be all that technological. An old tennis ball filled with 3Fg and a section of fuse to set it off would pop pretty well. If you wrapped it real tight with tape, adding layer after layer it seemed to add some bang. We were not trying to destroy anything or blow anyone up, you understand. It was just for the sheer joy of seeing the thing go off. (I know that some of the "politically correct" crowd do not understand that - to their loss.) One of the greatest feelings is seeing your own work go up with a boom that rocks the hillsides, and afterwards noticing that this time you did not get burned, blasted or otherwise damaged. I am nearly 50 years old now and still have all my fingers, eyes and ears. I lost various portions of skin at times, but it always grew back. However, the last time I lost a good part of my hair it never did come back. It was on a Fourth of July and a rocket I was launching tipped over in the grass. I reached down and set it back up in time for it to WHOOSH off just over my head, setting my few hairs on fire. I got the fire put out OK with a couple of well-aimed blows to the head, but the hair never came back! Oh well, that is a small price to pay.

While in High School I enrolled in the Armoury Class, otherwise known as "shop". There we constructed zip guns, pipe bombs and the best of all, CANNONS! My first cannon was a small affair of .45 caliber. With 150 grains of 3Fg blackpowder it would shoot well over 1/4 mile. I could even get my projectiles close to what I was shooting at once in a while. (I still have this cannon and fire it every Fourth of July) We did build one cannon with a 2" bore. It was test-fired in front of the Phoenix Public Library one Saturday night and it was promptly confiscated by the Phoenix Police and the Bomb Squad, so we never were able to give it a good work-out. Just as it went off some poor unsuspecting Motorcycle cop went by and though he was over 50 yards away, he was in front of it when it went off. The blank charge nearly shattered windows up and down the street and the Officer almost dumped his bike, undoubtedly thinking HE was the target. While the shock wave up and down the middle of town was most satisfying, the quick response by the gendarmes forced us to abandon the cannon. It was a sad day.

Some years later I made one other larger cannon, this one from a piece of 2 ½" heavy-wall pipe. I was recently married and living in a trailer park and the manager/owner of the park like myself enjoyed large explosions. On New Year's Eve we decided to fire the cannon, even though we did not have a stand built for it. We loaded it with 2Fg, measuring the powder by the handful. I wadded it real well with tin foil and newspapers. We leaned it against a chain link fence and lit the fuse. At the firing, several things happened all at once. The section of the fence disappeared in flame and smoke, never to be seen again. Burning newspapers cascaded down over the trailer park. And two sisters of ancient age who lived in a trailer across the street both suffered mild strokes. While the fires were put out and the fence was repaired I do not think the ladies ever recovered. A local prospector we all called "Gold Nugget" suffered some kind of heart palpitations and had to be treated we found out later. Seems he had several cases of dynamite in a shed behind his place and he thought it had blown. He was several blocks away from the cannon site, which testified to its effectiveness. All in all it was most gratifying, though because of the Police investigation we were forced to blame it all on a "sonic boom" from some low-flying Air Force jockey instead of being able to brag about it.

While still a teenager I conducted various experiments with black powder, some of which should not be repeated either in word or deed. I loaded or reloaded a number of different calibre's with black powder, including the .22 Long Rifle. While not giving much power, it was interesting. Back in those days it was not hard to purchase the required items, the attitude generally being if some kid blew himself up that was his problem. We believed and practiced the code of personal responsibility in those days. If you blew up something that belonged to someone else ( or blew up someone else) then they would come and get you. Other than that you were usually left alone. If you suffered from a mistake, it was hoped that you learned from it and did not repeat it. Like the day I did not have fuse for my cannon. I decided I just had to fire it anyhow, so I loaded it up, set it on the ground and aimed it, poured 4Fg powder on the fuse hole and down along the barrel and then made a little pile of it at the end of the barrel. Using paper matches, I lit a match and leaned down to light the trail of powder. There was a sudden POOF WHAM and when I could see again I couldn't hear anything! I staggered back into the house and promptly got yelled at because I smelled like rotten eggs and burned hair - a lethal combination. It was several months before my eyelashes, eyebrows and forehead hair grew back. My ears ring to this day. AND... I learned a valuable lesson. Have your buddy or a younger brother light the cannon.