The Firearm Blog

JR (A Keyboard and a .45) has built a nano-mortar. A beautiful design. Nano artillery at its finest!

1″ long and 0.710″ high.

More photos here.

The blackpowder cannon enthusiasts over at the Graybeard forums came up with some amazing pieces of artillery.

CU_Cannon built the “Nano-mortar”. It fires .177″ BBs. The bed it sits on is 1″ long.

Click to expand the images.

The Nano-mortar

Here is a video of it in action

Blueprints

Cal.45 built a 3mm mortar called the “Pico “Mortar”

The “Pico Mortar”

The pico mortar was build solely with a drill-press, some files and emery paper. It fires 3mm shot pellets (0.118 inch diameter) and has a maximum load of 0.2 grains of blackpowder. It has a barrel length of 8mm (0.315″) and can fire 6 meters (20 feet)

Anyways. I started with a load of about 0.2gr Swiss #2 but this did just a sizzling sound, so from the next shots on I used Swiss #1 (which is even finer in granulation: about 0.011 to 0.015 inch) which produced a nice snapping. Cheesy.

The touch hole is 0.5 millimeters = close to 0.02 inch (that makes it about 16% of the bore diameter (if one may still call it so).

Priming was done by filling the touch hole granule by granule; sweaty hands help maneuvering these tiny particlesin place.

First I wanted to enlarge the touch hole to fuse diameter and keep the rest at the smaller diameter (to keep some pressure) but the wall thickness is that small, that this wasnot possible.

Ignition with a lighter proofed to be better than trying to do it with a match: the flame produces soot but therefore does not function (kept them as size reference on the photo though).

Whatever. At first I thought that the shot would barely leve the muzzle: wrong!

Firing from the kitchen table I shot dimples into the door! This was 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) away! By the trajectory (angle of the mortar and height of impact) this means an estimated firing distance of 6 meters (about 20 feet): I would never have guessed this to be possible with a piece that has a barrel length of just 8 millimeters (0.315 inch).

The “Pico Mortar” being fired

“Pico Mortar” blueprints

Rickk built the “Nano Cannon”

The “Nano Cannon”

Now I know what only the others who have made one know… what the tremendous roar they make sounds like Grin

Bore is 3/16 (.186), so it will take a BB. Fuse is 5/64, so it will takes 1/16 fuse.

Trunions, as well as cascable, are 3/16 inch steel rod pressed into shallow 3/16 holes and then brazed in place.

All the work was done on my drill press, with some help from an angle grinder and a file for shaping.

It needs a pit more polishing, but I just couldn’t wait to fire it ! Total time into is so far is about 2 hours.

The “Nano Cannon” with carriage

I found the smoldering paper towel pieces about 15 feet away, and the gun recoils back about 6 inches!

BTW, for BB caliber, Q-tips make excellent cleaning rods.

Terry C. built the the very first micro-gonne. A hand gonne is a hand held cannon. It fires #4 buckshot.

the micro-gonne

The micro hand gonne being fired. Note the wooden rod attached.

Victor build a bigger scale hand gonne:

UPDATE: It is Chinese Artillery, not North Korean. Sorry, my mistake. Apparently those are Chinese characters in the background. Thanks Danger Zone for the correction.

A photo in the NK AAA article I recently blogged about show AKs mounted on artillery barrels. The theories on MilitaryPhotos.net are that they could be:

• Crude Sights
• Used to fire tracers
• Used to fire bullets during training instead of artillery rounds to save cost.

The only other explanation I can think of is that they are just stowed away up there. Although I don’t see how the operators could climb up a hot barrel to fetch it during combat.

Anyone know what they are really there for?

Planeman has written a fascinating article, “Bluffer’s guide: Fortress North Korea”, about North Korean AAA (Anti-Aircraft Artillery). It has has lots of 3D diagrams and google earth satellite photos. It is well worth reading.

AAA Coverage of Pyongyang

It is a classic example of how the internet enables the use unclassified information to create detailed reports on topics normally only accessible by intelligence personal.

Read it here.

Like every other red-blooded American boy, I enjoy the notion of propelling a piece of lead at up to Mach 8 and at “extreme” ranges. That’s why I was glad to hear that BAE Systems has delivered a rail gun capable of such feats, and that the US Navy signed for the package

Not exactly a firearm but I won’t discriminate against any device that can hurl lead and twice the speed of a .204 Ruger

Mind you, the Navy isn’t like pissing its pants for joy that it gets to play with a 32-megajoule rail gun. This is America, after all. What the Navy really wants is a 64-megajoule rail gun. But since that might take 13 years and would require, yep, 6 million amps per shot, the Navy’s gonna have to quit bitching and enjoy the toys it has, at least for now

More @ Gizmodo