Jamie actually looked for that little granite ball every time they were at the runway, hoping to find it hiding in a bush somewhere. Either it's still there or fell into the San Francisco Bay.
Awesome! But, pretty much any cannon can bee blown apart by jamming the pipe and fill it up with way too much powder. It was more impressive too see that such a well working cannon could be built out of wood.
The cannon in the myth was made by common townspeople. Them using *way* too much gunpowder and getting it jammed is a very realistic explanation. basically the tree cannon in the myth most likely exploded due to misuse the same way a normal metal one would have.
It's Granite! At one time that's what was used! You can find them. I used to work on a farm,the old farmer had a lot of them,i live in the Isle of Man!
+Mad Cow Rebel. either that or i bounced a few times and landed in the bay, or the cannon was powerful enough to fire it into the bay without touching the ground at all since the cannonball is alot heavier than the tennis ball it would go farther
Not a chance. That cannonball was intact 100%. I work in a museum where we have similar cannonballs, all used to destroy the building the museum is now in, and they were fired from a cannon about three times the size of this one and with probably 15 times more power straight into massive stone walls. They don't shatter :)
Here in the philippines, we make mini cannons made out of bamboo. Sure it's way out of proportion but imagine how flimsy bamboo is and how these cannons can launch rocks and cans over 100 meters only using gasoline.
What they didnt tell you is that modern black powder (which is what they used in the last clip) is a hell of a lot more explosive than some medieval concoction of sulphur and charcoal
well they could have used a log that was way to soft, that would make both the explosion and the fast drilling easier. maybe it was partitially rotten from the inside.
The Hole was proberbly uneven, and to have more a force behind the cannon blast they could have made a bigger chaber inside the Cannon before the Shaft just for more ... Boom?
I'm thinking the simplest way to build a tree cannot quickly would be to split the log, carve the barrel and then nail/tie it together with rope, which I can see would be disastrous
Maybe they used way too much gunpowder (remember: none of the people in the myth were actual cannon engineers) and the projectile could have gotten stuck. Real cannons misfired and exploded all the time. A crappy improvised wooden one exploding seems *super* likely, especially considering the people operating it.
You can tell they didn't have need enough weight pushing down on the drill. He made that dril sharp, yet the shavings were dust. It's needs more feed pressure.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but wouldn't the spoon drill have been more effective if they had pre-drilled a small hole with a regular drill? Seems to me that the spoondrill scrapes off the sides but has no downward cutting ability.
Wooden cannons are a tricky thing too, they CAN work but they could and often did explode, King james the second of scotland was killed when a wooden cannon exploded when it was fired during a siege, the gun crew was safe as they had wisely hidden behind a mound of dirt as was generally the practice when operating one.
The myth does not explain how familiar the villagers were with cannons. Simple logic would dictate to a ordinary untrained person that lots of gun powder= longer range and more death. For all we know (if this even happened) that the village blew up their cannon the exact same way the myth busters did. With too much gun powder and improper cannon balls. Not surprising for a one day build.
they were angry so they probably rushed things. Maybe picked a soft log or split the wood a bit when they were drilling the hole and they certainty didn't reinforce it with metal. That plus the fact they more then likely packed it with all the gunpowder they had makes for a big boom.
Same as they had mills, water mills, that could easily keep momentum on the drill and saws with less people working on it. So it is more likely to acctually be done than most people think. Thinking outside the box always good, knowing about the age is better. Besides we wouldn't have powered drills if we didn't have those mills XD
There ARE records of wooden cannons, but they were built with an inner iron/steel barrel. The Swedes used leather cannons in the same fashion in tha 17th century. The villagers of Paks (Hungary) built a full-wooden cannon and they got a barrel-explosion just like they did, seemingly for the same reasons. It was around 1570.
At the same time they were searching for the ball, on the other side of the bay; "Alright, which one of you brats threw this rock through mah windah?!"
How many ounces to a pound? I thought the canonball might have shattered on impact but some people say it might not have. Really impressed at the canon though
The people in the village would have been much stronger than Adam and Jamie, and would have also have more of an intensive to work. They would also be a whole village, so it's still perfectly possible.
yeah but i think it would have been possible to make it in one night,because they had the tools already pre made and they had a lot more human resource available and their spoon drill might have been more powerful and robust.
That was my thinking as well when I first watched this episode. Given that the cannon evidently poorly made I also wondered if the original might have been without the reinforcing iron bands which may have also led to it exploding with a more reasonable amount of gunpowder.
Considering the gun powder they made they likely overestimated the load, trust me scientists in the defence force know that too much is going to cause a chain reaction,
This log was sat drying for a long time, if the log was fresh and wet maybe different story also maybe a weaker log, they made it over night in the spare of the moment not expertly chosen and the best thickness.
It's funny see how the shows success has effected the safety and money issues, If they built this cannon now, they would have fired it in a bombing range, and would have used slowmo cameras too :D
Well, if you noticed their drilling with the medieval tool, you would know that even with taking turns, 12 hours still seems short. Plus drilling the hole is not the only part about the tree cannon. So even if the night was long enough to drill the hole, they would have an extremely short time frame for the rest.
The cannon in the myth was built by desperate medieval peasants. Their workmanship was likely much sloppier than the Mythbusters'. A rotten log, no reinforcement, too much powder, an uneven bore causing the ball to get caught. There's all sorts of ways it could have failed.
merdieval peaseants who were carpenters,blacksmiths,alchemists and lumberjacks so quite a skillfull peasants also modern man also can fill too much powder in their cartridges reloads blowing up their rifles and revolvers
@@Debonair.Aristocrat Depending on what are you using as a comparison. Knowledge-wise, no, same for safety standards, mechanical designs, pyrotechnic, etc, meaning almost everything involved in designing anything that is remotely safe. From the get-go, a cannon that can be built out of a tree trunk is already stupidity in its highest form: low accuracy, low fire power, small cannon ball (else you risk the wood integrity), can't use a lot of gun powder (risk of explosion) and overall is a much greater threat to everyone operating the damn trunk rather than the enemy. They'd have better luck jamming a log with gunpowder and rolling it downhill as a primitive bomb.
@@Debonair.Aristocrat What are you even talking about? There's no medieval village idiot that could come close to what the modern man can do, you're just an old saggy idiot who complains about everything. Get out of here.
There are things that aren't shown in the program. Sometimes, due to the duration of the show, they have to cut some parts. It doesn't mean that they forget thing (but sometimes they really do, like put bones in their balistic gel fists, for example).
Also additional thing here. They Drilled this thing over Night. So it was likely done MUUUUUCH less Precise than what was Build here. And they likely had no Idea how to Measure Gunpowder so they might just have stuffed the Cannon to the Brink :P
Could've done any technique to put the hole in too, someone suggested they could've split the lock and tied it together. That would result in the log being blown apart much easier, too
well about cannon, i took a fat log and drilled a hole in side, put 20 grams of homemade blackpowder, added electric ignitor and made wooden plug. blown mup soo good, also saved some work for spliting.
one thing they never considered what if the drill theyd made back then was a much longer one, and that meant that a whole team of people can power the drill at once, that would increase speed for sure
lmfao best way to retreat from a frontline with cannon placements just stuff em full of gunpowder cork the ends and wait a couple hundred feet back for the enemy to ride in and take the place then blow the cannons XD
actually i wouldnt say this myth was busted, just that tree cannons made and fired according to modern standards do not explode easily. who knows, they may have used more gunpowder or something that made it explode.
I'm thinking, maybe the handle is shorter, although they would need mroe force, but then, they can drill 10 times faster. and if one is tired, the others can continue while he rest.
Mostly every village in medival had a river throughthe village. I think the also used the power of the water. I think with a mill they could done it. Also they normally had horses or other animals. I think they could done it. They weren't stupid. PS.: Sorry for my terrible english. Just correct my in your mind. You don't have to tell me my mistakes. Thx...
I don't really know what they were expecting. Even a regular cannon can blow apart if you back the damn thing up too much and then overprime it with too much powder. Wood is just more vulnerable to internal stresses than, say, cast iron.
These 2 certainly didnt believe in keeping anything for nostalgic purposes. (Maybe only if they could blow it up later)..... i miss this show with these 2 in it.
It might have if the villagers all took turns drilling and kept up the whole night. They might conceivably of had the time. Plus it depends on when they started and finished as no specific amount of time was offered.
they never in these clips anyway properly announced it busted based on what i saw they would probably call it plausible as it can happen and chances were the townsfolk used a larger hole and stuffed in as much powder as they had.
They never said that it was impossible to bore a hole with a spoon drill. They said it was BUSTED because IT WOULD TAKE LONGER THAN A DAY TO MAKE A HOLE, even though the myth stated that it took the towns people only ONE day to do it. Not trying to start a fight.
Realistically, if the townsfolk didnt know what they were doing, they probably thought that the more the better and put to much in the cannon, causing it to explode/blow up ect.
The bore of the cannon is far too small, an average cannon would have a bore of about six inches in diameter, such a wooden cannon would then probably explode
this tree log was never ment to be a cannon ....... it was a granade. and they shot it out of a stone cannon that was inside a iron cannon that was loaded on a slingshot
maybe it took longer than 1 night because stories tend to lose and gain new info in long periods of time and Jamie said it's not possible to drill such a deep hole in one night
The original cannon was probably made with a rotted log, the reason it exploded and the reason they could drill it in one day.
plus i doubt that they reinforced it
@@Catnippy the dude made that comment 7 years ago.
@@ChadKakashi still true
@@ChadKakashi So: no one is allowed to comment on his comment any more?
i wasnt even alive 7 years ago
Jamie actually looked for that little granite ball every time they were at the runway, hoping to find it hiding in a bush somewhere. Either it's still there or fell into the San Francisco Bay.
as someone else here said it probably shattered when it hit the runway
Let's hope it was lucky enough to fly right out of San Francisco.
i kinda feel bad for him. he’s sentimental about that ball hahaha
legends says that it is in orbit, and nasa has to calculate it way always in order to avoid a collision.
poor jamie.... losing his awesomely carved ball. you can here the disappointment in his voice
wrong "hear"
Legends say that Jamie’s cannonball is still going
yeah because it's in orbit
Ouch... found it
@@poolguy101 th-cam.com/video/ui-xBeqBNi4/w-d-xo.html hahahahaahhaha.
it went into the orbit
Awesome!
But, pretty much any cannon can bee blown apart by jamming the pipe and fill it up with way too much powder. It was more impressive too see that such a well working cannon could be built out of wood.
It would depend on the platform you put it on
@@Exarhadsgfds
It's an artillery piece, it doesn't need to be precise.
The cannon in the myth was made by common townspeople. Them using *way* too much gunpowder and getting it jammed is a very realistic explanation. basically the tree cannon in the myth most likely exploded due to misuse the same way a normal metal one would have.
@@Knyex
Agreed. It's quite plausible.
The equipment will only go as far as the operator allows it. If the operator F*up, then so will the equipment.
I think Jamie's cannonball must have shattered when it hit the ground. 😔
It's Granite! At one time that's what was used! You can find them. I used to work on a farm,the old farmer had a lot of them,i live in the Isle of Man!
+Mad Cow Rebel. either that or i bounced a few times and landed in the bay, or the cannon was powerful enough to fire it into the bay without touching the ground at all since the cannonball is alot heavier than the tennis ball it would go farther
@@josephkaufmann4917 Oh nice! I live on the Isle Of Man and didn't realize you could find Cannon balls.
Nah. Someone working there mustve found it
Not a chance. That cannonball was intact 100%. I work in a museum where we have similar cannonballs, all used to destroy the building the museum is now in, and they were fired from a cannon about three times the size of this one and with probably 15 times more power straight into massive stone walls. They don't shatter :)
"Hey, test out a wooden cannon!"
Jamie&Adam: "Make a wooden pipe bomb? Sure!"
The guy who invented the myth is so happy now. No one will know he actually killed thw villagers
Bulgaria used a cherry cannon (Made out of a cherry tree) in the April uprising 1876. It actually killed its user on the first shot.
Here in the philippines, we make mini cannons made out of bamboo. Sure it's way out of proportion but imagine how flimsy bamboo is and how these cannons can launch rocks and cans over 100 meters only using gasoline.
Gun powder has more potential force energy wise, and TNT was originally more gun powder than nitro glycerine
What they didnt tell you is that modern black powder (which is what they used in the last clip) is a hell of a lot more explosive than some medieval concoction of sulphur and charcoal
well they could have used a log that was way to soft, that would make both the explosion and the fast drilling easier. maybe it was partitially rotten from the inside.
The Hole was proberbly uneven, and to have more a force behind the cannon blast they could have made a bigger chaber inside the Cannon before the Shaft just for more ... Boom?
I'm thinking the simplest way to build a tree cannot quickly would be to split the log, carve the barrel and then nail/tie it together with rope, which I can see would be disastrous
Maybe they used way too much gunpowder (remember: none of the people in the myth were actual cannon engineers) and the projectile could have gotten stuck.
Real cannons misfired and exploded all the time. A crappy improvised wooden one exploding seems *super* likely, especially considering the people operating it.
They should've just rigged up a bow drill. Now that CAN drill a log like that in a night.
You can tell they didn't have need enough weight pushing down on the drill. He made that dril sharp, yet the shavings were dust. It's needs more feed pressure.
Next up: The Mythbusters make a tree out of a cannon
Maybe this is a dumb question, but wouldn't the spoon drill have been more effective if they had pre-drilled a small hole with a regular drill? Seems to me that the spoondrill scrapes off the sides but has no downward cutting ability.
Wooden cannons are a tricky thing too, they CAN work but they could and often did explode, King james the second of scotland was killed when a wooden cannon exploded when it was fired during a siege, the gun crew was safe as they had wisely hidden behind a mound of dirt as was generally the practice when operating one.
The Turkish were the first to use canons in war and were deadly effective
Back then the safety parameters on Mythbusters was listed under the philosophy: "Best Guess"
Looking at the later seasons its like night and day
indeed, Jamie once said that the guy in charge of the gunpowder was kinda clueless. From that point on they started working with bombsquad.
mythbuster: I hope it won’t blow up on us.
Also mythbusters: Lets try 5 pound of gunpowder.
I wonder if the cannonball was really launched or destroyed in the blast
The myth does not explain how familiar the villagers were with cannons. Simple logic would dictate to a ordinary untrained person that lots of gun powder= longer range and more death. For all we know (if this even happened) that the village blew up their cannon the exact same way the myth busters did. With too much gun powder and improper cannon balls. Not surprising for a one day build.
The shrapnel from the exploding cannon may have though... in Naval battles, the shrapnel from a cannon ball was more deadly than the ball themselves.
That is also how modern kinetic shells work.
they were angry so they probably rushed things. Maybe picked a soft log or split the wood a bit when they were drilling the hole and they certainty didn't reinforce it with metal. That plus the fact they more then likely packed it with all the gunpowder they had makes for a big boom.
Same as they had mills, water mills, that could easily keep momentum on the drill and saws with less people working on it. So it is more likely to acctually be done than most people think. Thinking outside the box always good, knowing about the age is better. Besides we wouldn't have powered drills if we didn't have those mills XD
Jamie still went looking for that cannon ball any time they returned to the runway when he had time.
There ARE records of wooden cannons, but they were built with an inner iron/steel barrel. The Swedes used leather cannons in the same fashion in tha 17th century. The villagers of Paks (Hungary) built a full-wooden cannon and they got a barrel-explosion just like they did, seemingly for the same reasons. It was around 1570.
They be like fuck it,lets get another one of them technicians 😂
thank god they spild the soda, otherwise no 5 pounds of gunpowder
At the same time they were searching for the ball, on the other side of the bay;
"Alright, which one of you brats threw this rock through mah windah?!"
bald man sad about loosing ball
How many ounces to a pound? I thought the canonball might have shattered on impact but some people say it might not have. Really impressed at the canon though
it made me feel kinda sad when they blew the cannon up :( they worked so hard to make it and it was working so well....
“I want my ball back 😔” - jamie
ah man that was quite epic but come on they wrecked a really cool cannon lol.
5:52 his laugh is so cute 😭😭😭
The people in the village would have been much stronger than Adam and Jamie, and would have also have more of an intensive to work. They would also be a whole village, so it's still perfectly possible.
Wouldn't they have to register it with ATF as a destructive device? Since the bore is over .50 caliber.
how far do you think that cannon ball went? I think it went somewhere around 4 miles away...
yeah but i think it would have been possible to make it in one night,because they had the tools already pre made and they had a lot more human resource available and their spoon drill might have been more powerful and robust.
Henzzman also depends on the wood if they used hard wood or soft wood
That was my thinking as well when I first watched this episode. Given that the cannon evidently poorly made I also wondered if the original might have been without the reinforcing iron bands which may have also led to it exploding with a more reasonable amount of gunpowder.
Considering the gun powder they made they likely overestimated the load, trust me scientists in the defence force know that too much is going to cause a chain reaction,
This log was sat drying for a long time, if the log was fresh and wet maybe different story also maybe a weaker log, they made it over night in the spare of the moment not expertly chosen and the best thickness.
It's funny see how the shows success has effected the safety and money issues,
If they built this cannon now, they would have fired it in a bombing range, and would have used slowmo cameras too :D
Well, if you noticed their drilling with the medieval tool, you would know that even with taking turns, 12 hours still seems short. Plus drilling the hole is not the only part about the tree cannon. So even if the night was long enough to drill the hole, they would have an extremely short time frame for the rest.
5:50 i didnt get that "joke" when i was 7 lol
It's the Hyneman. He is always right.
The cannon in the myth was built by desperate medieval peasants. Their workmanship was likely much sloppier than the Mythbusters'. A rotten log, no reinforcement, too much powder, an uneven bore causing the ball to get caught. There's all sorts of ways it could have failed.
You do realise that on average a medieval village idiot was more capable than modern man.
merdieval peaseants who were carpenters,blacksmiths,alchemists and lumberjacks so quite a skillfull peasants
also modern man also can fill too much powder in their cartridges reloads blowing up their rifles and revolvers
@@Debonair.Aristocrat Depending on what are you using as a comparison. Knowledge-wise, no, same for safety standards, mechanical designs, pyrotechnic, etc, meaning almost everything involved in designing anything that is remotely safe.
From the get-go, a cannon that can be built out of a tree trunk is already stupidity in its highest form: low accuracy, low fire power, small cannon ball (else you risk the wood integrity), can't use a lot of gun powder (risk of explosion) and overall is a much greater threat to everyone operating the damn trunk rather than the enemy. They'd have better luck jamming a log with gunpowder and rolling it downhill as a primitive bomb.
@@Debonair.Aristocrat What are you even talking about? There's no medieval village idiot that could come close to what the modern man can do, you're just an old saggy idiot who complains about everything. Get out of here.
Don't underestimate medievil villagers. Twice as strong and twice as smart as you or me.
They knew what they were doing.
when the soda can hissed, i thought it was the gun powder activated
6 people knew the guy who was suddenly hit by a handcarved cannonball...
which color is easier to see than white at a black surface?
and it was probably a way bigger shot and load. making the log weaker having a higher bore.
There are things that aren't shown in the program. Sometimes, due to the duration of the show, they have to cut some parts. It doesn't mean that they forget thing (but sometimes they really do, like put bones in their balistic gel fists, for example).
Also additional thing here.
They Drilled this thing over Night. So it was likely done MUUUUUCH less Precise than what was Build here.
And they likely had no Idea how to Measure Gunpowder so they might just have stuffed the Cannon to the Brink :P
Could've done any technique to put the hole in too, someone suggested they could've split the lock and tied it together. That would result in the log being blown apart much easier, too
well about cannon, i took a fat log and drilled a hole in side, put 20 grams of homemade blackpowder, added electric ignitor and made wooden plug. blown mup soo good, also saved some work for spliting.
Someone hasn't been paying attention. They built it OVERNIGHT. That was their time frame.
one thing they never considered what if the drill theyd made back then was a much longer one, and that meant that a whole team of people can power the drill at once, that would increase speed for sure
mythbusters: *doing science*
jamie: imma put a can of soda in a hole
lmfao best way to retreat from a frontline with cannon placements just stuff em full of gunpowder cork the ends and wait a couple hundred feet back for the enemy to ride in and take the place then blow the cannons XD
Wiah! Jammie did something wrong lol
actually i wouldnt say this myth was busted, just that tree cannons made and fired according to modern standards do not explode easily. who knows, they may have used more gunpowder or something that made it explode.
I'm thinking, maybe the handle is shorter, although they would need mroe force, but then, they can drill 10 times faster. and if one is tired, the others can continue while he rest.
Jamie should have painted the stone with spray paint a day glow orange or something.
to this day jamie has still never found that cannonball that he chiseled!!!
Why didn't they move the cars further away tho?
as the narrator said, for safety. better hit the car than your own head
No.. a logical extension would be that people of that era were unable to bore a deep hole into hard wood in one night.
8:30 "eighty pounds or something" lol, no jamie, that's no 80 pounds for that piece of wood
English elm is 0.55-0.6kg/dm3. That log looks to be about 15x20x170cm in size. That equals about 28-30kg or 62-68lbs. Slight exaggeration I'd say.
Just picture that, that tree canon was considered a WMD
It's weird to me that there was no slow motion, backstop, ballistic gel, backup balls . . . basically anything that would return good data.
A little Color on the ball would have made it easier to find
5:38
this is where the sexual innuendo began
5:49
ehem
Didn't they also destroy a car window?
Mostly every village in medival had a river throughthe village. I think the also used the power of the water. I think with a mill they could done it. Also they normally had horses or other animals. I think they could done it. They weren't stupid.
PS.: Sorry for my terrible english. Just correct my in your mind. You don't have to tell me my mistakes. Thx...
The reason why Jamie felt sad is he identifies as a baseball, and he felt like he lost a friend.
I don't really know what they were expecting. Even a regular cannon can blow apart if you back the damn thing up too much and then overprime it with too much powder. Wood is just more vulnerable to internal stresses than, say, cast iron.
Tengou they were trying to blow it up ffs
No, the logical extension of that claim would be that people of that era took a lot of time to bore holes in wood.
0:47 that kinda makes me nervous. Static charges and friction are a thing you know ...
a good idea is to donate such cannon to enemies.
These 2 certainly didnt believe in keeping anything for nostalgic purposes. (Maybe only if they could blow it up later)..... i miss this show with these 2 in it.
It might have if the villagers all took turns drilling and kept up the whole night. They might conceivably of had the time. Plus it depends on when they started and finished as no specific amount of time was offered.
Disintegrated? No. More probable is that it split into clusters, which would be even more deadly for any infantry it was aimed at.
Ok now I wanna try to fall a tree with explosives XD
At least this one didn't hit a house like the bowling ball did.
Cannons were made of wooden staves banded with iron well into 14th century anyway, so it was never a myth to start with
they never in these clips anyway properly announced it busted based on what i saw they would probably call it plausible as it can happen and chances were the townsfolk used a larger hole and stuffed in as much powder as they had.
Should have dyed the ball red or cover it on tracing fluid
even with all the experience in the world, I doubt anyone would be able to drill a 6 foot hole a tree with those tools
so thats why i have a broken window XD
they didnt sa it couldnt be done, they said it would be prettymuch impossible to bore a deep enough hole in just a few hours
Why destroying the well made cannon???
They never said that it was impossible to bore a hole with a spoon drill. They said it was BUSTED because IT WOULD TAKE LONGER THAN A DAY TO MAKE A HOLE, even though the myth stated that it took the towns people only ONE day to do it. Not trying to start a fight.
Realistically, if the townsfolk didnt know what they were doing, they probably thought that the more the better and put to much in the cannon, causing it to explode/blow up ect.
The bore of the cannon is far too small, an average cannon would have a bore of about six inches in diameter, such a wooden cannon would then probably explode
Busting makes me feel good
it's probably busted becuase they had to use a BAG of gunpowder, i don't think a town would use a bag of medivail to launch a rock.
With 5 pounds of gunpowder they made a tree bomb not tree cannon .lol
hope jamie finds his ball someday.....
i want to go and find it!
Best recommendation ive gotten 10
this tree log was never ment to be a cannon ....... it was a granade. and they shot it out of a stone cannon that was inside a iron cannon that was loaded on a slingshot
Did someone ever find the cannonball? Maybe a fan or something
Indeed. They forget a lot of such things in many of their tests.
maybe it took longer than 1 night because stories tend to lose and gain new info in long periods of time and Jamie said it's not possible to drill such a deep hole in one night
Oh wait nvm that was another mythbusters experiment lol.
You can even make a cannon with a bamboo