Timeline for How effective would a stone cannon be?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
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| Jul 19, 2018 at 1:29 | history | edited | Gryphon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
corrected grammar
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| May 8, 2017 at 17:25 | comment | added | Delioth | @Michael the opposite would likely be more effective- stone's low flex makes it liable to fracture and blast apart, since it can't flex with the blast. As such, the wood outside wouldn't do a whole lot, since the stone breaking would absorb much of the blast's energy. However, wood encased with ropes encased with stone could be good- we get the flex from the wood/rope layers, but the compressive strength of stone keeps the structure in pressure and doesn't allow it to flex too much. I don't know enough to say if it would actually be good though, just the premise seems sound(ish). | |
| May 8, 2017 at 11:53 | comment | added | Matt Bowyer | It's probably worth remembering that if you want to turn a large piece of stone in to a lot of smaller bits (ie tunnelling or mining) then explosives are the best way - and before the development of high explosives gunpowder was used for exactly that. Stone is a very poor material to make something designed to contain an explosion from. | |
| May 8, 2017 at 6:25 | comment | added | Michael | What if one wrapped a stone cannon in ropes or encased it in wood? Then the stone would only be subject to pressure and heat. | |
| May 7, 2017 at 17:55 | comment | added | Catalyst | Props for the rope-wound wooden cannon. Even more interesting is that Basalt fibers are a real, usefully strong, commercially available thing. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber and basalt-fiber.com So, one could easily imagine using basalt fibers, in some suitable matrix, to make a cannon barrel out of stone. | |
| May 7, 2017 at 17:48 | history | edited | Willk | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
lead!
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| May 7, 2017 at 17:43 | history | edited | Willk | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
wood!
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| May 7, 2017 at 17:42 | comment | added | o.m. | A fougasse is a buried stone gun excavated in place. Not all of them fired flammables, some fired projectiles. | |
| May 7, 2017 at 17:32 | comment | added | Schwern | Excellent answer. Stone also has natural fractures and weak points, some too small to see, which might open upon firing further reducing their strength; this cannot be fixed. Metals (ideally) have those worked out in the forging and forging process. | |
| S May 7, 2017 at 17:29 | history | suggested | Dave Cousineau | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
math formatting and links
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| May 7, 2017 at 16:42 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 7, 2017 at 17:29 | |||||
| May 7, 2017 at 15:55 | history | answered | Willk | CC BY-SA 3.0 |