On the 8 ga reloading bandwagon

[OH Osthaus]

Originally Posted by edgarspencer

For the life of me, I can not find the mortar that my dad had. I suspect he may have "put it away".
From the lawn, in front of the house, to the road is approximately 1200'. From the other side of the road, to the pond at the edge of that field, is another 1200-1500 feet.
The mortar was commercially manufactured, in the foundry which belonged to my grandfather. as I recall it woeighed about 35-40 lbs. The bore was, not accidentally, a slight bit larger than a golf ball, such that a snug fit was attained with some sort of patch.
After some adjustment, we were able to lob, one after another, golf balls into that pond.
The mortar never got me into any trouble, but I do recall the Hartford Golf Club being somewhat annoyed when we regularly went out at night and cleaned up the practice driving range.

When I was into reenacting and belonged to a black powder shooting club - we had a member who had a mortar. the bore was bigger than a golf ball, maybe tennis ball size. if you were close when he set it off it sucked the air out of you

two events come to mind- once at the annual rendezvous he fired it too early in the morning. the town cops from a village about 6 -7 miles away as the crow flies came out and asked him not to do it again, people in town called the cops wondering where the explosion was

and once we stopped for dinner (in garb) at a rural country club for dinner on the way home from an event. a waitress overheard him say something about his "cannon" and she said she didn't believe he had one. he told her to get the manager's permission and he would show her. she got it and he loaded and fired a slightly lighter than normal load - the restaurant emptied out because every car in the lot had its alarm set off