As I am sure you are aware, tuesday September 19th is "Talk like a Pirate Day". Instead of buying some plastic sword and fake eye-patches, I decided to make some artillery to ensure that I am safe from other pirate-day celebrating co-workers. We will be making a film canister cannon that will literally blow your coworkers (or fellow students) away. We will be using some easy to find parts to create the cannon, and you should be able to make it in one afternoon. The parts we are going to use are only my suggestion, you can make your cannon any way that you would like it.

Parts Needed:

Cannon Barrel Cannon Base Cannon Wheels & Mounting hardware Scripto AimnFlame electronic lighter Solid core wire Empty Film Canister Binaca (Found at CVS or Walgreens) Wood & Plastic Glue (I used gorilla glue) Paint & Wood stain Drill & a range of drill bits

As I stated above, you can make your cannon anyway you want. I went to hobby lobby with the intention to only get the wood wheels. I was going to make all of the parts by hand, but then I found the wooden box and lighthouse pictured above. Using my imagination, I noted that it looked strikingly like a cannon barrel. I tried to explain what I was going to do with it to my wife, but she couldn't "see" it. =)

The first thing you need to do is get your cannon barrel all setup for firing. Carefully separate the top of your lighthouse, and remove (and discard) the base. (see photo) To do this I used a small wood chisel to pry the two pieces apart to break the glue. Then take your scripto lighter apart and save both the igniter and the fuel tube.

Note: Make sure that you use a Scripto brand lighter, they may be a little bit more expensive but the igniters have solder tabs on them. This will make your life a lot more easier during this build. I started out by using a lighter I bought at the dollar store, and the igniter was a piece of crap. I learned my lesson so you don't have to.

Once you have the pieces apart, you will need to prepare the barrel and igniter. Using a drill bit I drilled out the base of the cannon barrel so that the hole goes all the way through. We will use this hole to route the igniter wires through. Then I soldered wires to the igniter making sure to leave a lot of extra wire, as we can trim to desired length later. Next we are going to embed the igniter into the top of our barrel.

Start off by drilling the outside hole of the top of the cannon to match the "button" on the igniter. Once you can insert the "button" of the igniter into the top of the cannon easily, you can start on the underside. The underside is going to need to be able to hold the igniter, along with the wires that are soldered to it. The hole on the inside will be a lot larger than the one on the outside. As you can see below, I ended up having to use a dremel tool to create a "channel" on the inside that the wires could run down.

This will probably be the trickiest part of the whole build. Don't think that it has to be perfect, but you want a nice tight fit, making sure that when you secure the end of the igniter, you can easily push the trigger button.

At this point your cannon barrel cap should be complete, the igniter should be inserted, with wires coming out of the end. You should be able to fully depress the button of the igniter (When you hold the end so it doesn't push out the bottom). The bottom half of the barrel should have a hole drilled all the way through it.

At this point put everything together TEMPORARILY and test the ignition system. You may need to wrap the wires around each other to keep the ends close enough to make the spark. You should be able to get a nice blue spark when you press the trigger button completely. (sorry the pic is so blurry)

From here, I disassembled everything and used a 1 1/2" spade bit to countersink the end of my cannon barrel. The film canister is going to be placed at the end of the barrel, and I wanted the canister lid to be as flush as possible with the end of the barrel. The problem with spade bits is that the ends cut a lot deeper than the middle, so once I drilled down as far as I could, I used my dremel with a grinding wheel to flatten out the cut.

Once I had it how I liked it, I drilled a hole in the center of the film canister cap, and once again reassembled the barrel. At this time I decided that I wanted to have an "Auto-Loading" barrel, so I drilled a hole near the end of the barrel up into the empty shaft running down the center of the barrel. I put the fuel tube (from the scripto lighter) through this hole and out through the film canister cap. If I had it to do again, I probably wouldn't do this. (It didn't work exactly as planned -- see end of document)

Now we need to glue all the pieces together. I used gorilla glue, but you can use whatever type of glue you have availble.  The Cannon top to the barrel, and then with the wires & fuel tube through the hole of the film canister cap, the cap to the end of the barrel. Making sure that there was enough tubing coming out of both sides, I put a large glob of gorilla glue over the tubing and wires to seal the hole in the film canister cap. I then let the barrel sit over night to let the glue setup.

While the barrel is setting up, lets focus on our cannon base. This part is pretty straightforward and easy to do. Using a dremel tool, I sanded down an area in the center. I want my cannon barrel to be on a 45deg angle (or at least close to it) as it sits on my desk. After I got it to where I wanted it, I then installed the wheels on the base. Don't worry if the sanded area isn't exactly right, you can fix it later when the barrel is dry.

As soon as everything is nice and dry, check your cannon barrel angle and adjust as necessary. Trim and strip your wires so that they stick out close to the center of the film canister when it is snapped on. Make sure the ends are close enough that when you press the igniter button that it produces a good spark. You should probably test your cannon at this point. Take your binaca and spray one shot into the film canister. Then snap the canister onto the lid -- at this point it is no longer a film canister, it is a CANNON BALL! Ok, now don't point the cannon at your cat or anything, and press the button. If everything went well you should now be saying "SH*T" because it is a lot cooler than you were expecting. Shoot it a couple times, but try and bring yourself back and finish your project.

Paint and stain the parts separately as to your taste. I wanted my barrel a shiny black, and the base a nice stained wood. I used black spray paint to paint my barrel, masking off the igniter button and the film canister cap. (I put the film canister in the cap, and then masked off everything) After a couple coats of black spray paint, I added a few coats of glossy clear acrylic to make it shine. I then removed the wheels and stained the base, and then spray painted the wheels black.

All that is left is to put everything together. I used elmer's wood glue to attach my cannon barrel to the base, and misc hardware to attach the wheels.

As I mentioned above, you can see that I attempted an "Auto-Loading" cannon. The problem is that the binaca doesn't have enough oomph to fill the canister when is snapped on. Not only that, but the fuel-air mixture is incorrect when it works anyway so it wont fire. It is much better to spray the binaca into the canister and then snap it into place. Spend that extra time building some sort of fancy binaca holder instead. =)

There you have it, a finished Pirate Cubicle Cannon!

Make sure before you take it to work/school/whatever that you stock up on plenty of cannon balls and binaca incase a war breaks out!