Soon after the royal repast, Mark asked us to go over to the range and set it up and start shooting while he attended to a few chores. He said he would join us shortly. We strolled over to the meadow which was near our sleeping area and fell to setting up tables, chairs, unpacking guns, targets and other equipment. We had all this done pretty quickly so we started off shooting in short order. We started off with XL’s weapons, he brought along plenty of ammo and neat rifle rests.
Baljit had brought along his timer, the function of which escaped me at first, as I am no Bob Munden. Baljit explained that the gadget could time how much time you took to empty a magazine and compare that with how well you scored on the target with XL’s 10/22. XL told me about the rifleman’s cadence which is: “breathe in-breathe out- fire, breathe in-breathe out- fire” – after that, it all made some sense and I got into the spirit of the thing.
When one of us was firing with Baljit doing the timing the rest of us were reloading magazines, photographing scenes and targets, calling out shots with binoculars and generally keeping busy supporting the shooter. It was all really great teamwork, all done without any spoken agreement which I found very endearing. All of were plinking away and getting creative with targets such as water bottles, walnuts and empty beer cans which, I assure you we had a plentiful supply of!
! Now, recall the Suzuki Samurai which I mentioned earlier that was apparently sitting in Mark’s garage; he had shared with me his plans for the vehicle to get it redone with a small Honda Civic Diesel, etc. I got the impression that the project was for much later and that the Samurai was simply resting in the shed.
Imagine our jaw dropping surprise when during our shooting we heard some sort of machine approaching from our left, we held up shooting immediately and then saw Mark and his son Collin driving up in the Suzuki Samurai! But what was that strange object being dragged behind the truck? Wow! It was the ancient Cannon which was earlier sitting in a tool shed, now suddenly mobile on its rig!! Mark disembarked and said something like - we are going to touch off this baby! Woo Hoo!
This was a great moment because Mark never said anything earlier about bringing in the Cannon to the firing range or firing it. What a wonderful surprise – Thanks Mark! We took turns loading, wadding, priming and firing the Cannon under Marks tutelage, which was an amazing experience. The ‘ball’ used was a ‘D’ sized battery.
Process: we had to first get the cannon standing upright on the ground, then fit in the fuse cut to the right size, measure and pour in a handful of ‘real’ black powder then push in wads of news paper, tamp it down with an old wooden curtain rod, drop the ‘D’ shell in then add some more wads of newspaper, tamp it down again.
The fuse was cut very scientifically – decide on a random length that you think would be the bore of the cannon, then add an inch or so – and then add a couple of inches more; the theory employed being “better safe than sorry”!
!We then had to do a two man lift job on the cannon to get it back on its rig (it was quite heavy upwards of 50 lb – I would think), lock it into place with the iron hasps, shove in the retaining pins in the hasps, aim it by moving the rig by it’s wheels, adjust the elevation (we used some handily available pieces of wood for this task). We aimed what we figured was low as we wanted to see where the ‘D’ Cell (Shell) finally landed and what damage it did.
And we were all set to fire!
Mark then called for volunteers – ooops - no volunteers! He finally picked Baljit as the best marksman and asked him to perform the aiming (he informed us that the range of the weapon was about 500+ yards) and the ‘touch off’ process. Now came the fun part, we had to light the fuse with XL’s cigarette lighter. Being a mildly windy day, the flame kept going off and in the bright sunshine we were unable to judge whether the fuse had caught properly. This was very much akin to setting off the legendary Lakshmi Bomb firework back in India on Diwali day. Try, run away, then, try again more confidently this time.
Mark explained that we had to allow for sufficient time to make doubly sure that the cannon was safe to handle. We also had to give the cannon a good half hour between shots as we were not swabbing out (required process) the barrel between shots just to ensure there was no smoldering powder left over from the last firing. That would be a disaster!
We also discovered that Collin has brought along in the Suzuki Samurai, his pet toy – a small, ancient mortar! This cute little thinghy also operated with the same medium/slow burning fuse but used FFF substitute black powder instead (which XL had picked up at Cabelas the day before at Mark’s request).
More coming up....pictures, write-ups AND Videos
In the first building, on the left, is a blacksmith's shop and Mark has his reloading room above that.