It's new years eve !

Wish I still had that damned dangerously fun black powder cannon !
The one we welded up in high school and used for years afterward.
Not the one that we blew the back off of it.
Not the one that we had to attach a rake too the bottom to keep it from blowing back like a missile at us.
The one where we couldn't quite get the weld right so when we accidentally welded a hole in the thing we then welded a 1/4" x 2 x 2 plate "patch" over the hole. One that we had just 'customized' and bent, I think it might have been on an anvil but I would have to do a verification of that with the other who was there, to roughly the shape of the cannon
The one where if you didn't hold it just right the black powder started falling out around the edges of the patch.
We tended to use as long a wick as possible to provide us ample time to run the hell away from it before it went off. Except for that time when we didn't have any wick left but we did have a lot of beer and, um, "other stuff" so we made a wick out of toilet paper and black powder.
Yes, it did work, sort of, and we didn't even die! Although James was questioning that for a moment since he was the one who actually lit the wick. Actually he still questions it I'm sure

Safety was always first on our minds of course (cause that's what we were thinking of while fiddling with the thing.)
But we were never inebriated at all. [disclaimer]
Lets' see, what did we shoot out of that thing any way.
Rocks,
glass,
ball bearings,
Hot sauce bottle bombs with a pre-lit wick. (yes the wick has too be slightly longer than the cannons wick and the timing for lighting is also crucial.
adjustable wrench,
ok how about etc. you get the point.
Admittedly we mostly simply overloaded it with powder and newspaper for a "blank" shot just to listen to and watch the big bang.
We once tried an experiment and called a friend about a half mile away across the field and through the woods.

Somewhere thereabouts ya know?

We loaded one of those "blanks", aimed it in the general direction of his house and BANG! he called seconds later to explain how his windows shook. I'm not really sure why we didn't just stay on the phone? But

We celebrated with more...

It was fun and harmless. Well, it was fun.

And we named it Armageddon.
.
.