This is my Boomstick... Part 3

This should be the final post on the build of the cannon. Since I posted the last update, i have added the rusty cannonballs, "aged' the cannon and tested the fog machine on the inside. 

The cannonballs are made from six 6" foam balls (Amazon), Krylon Hammered black spray paint, and acrylic paint. Once the paint dried, and the foam made funky divots and melted spots in the balls, I used a mix or rust red, dark orange and orange to "oxidize various spots on the cannon balls using a mix of the colors splotched on via a small wet sponge. You can be as minimalist or crazy as you want. Cannonballs in the this era, unlike the cannons, were made of iron, and they deteriorate like crazy. Goggle it. Unfortunately, almost all the images of old cannon balls are via the stock photo sites and I refuse to link to those scammers. Once the oxidized spots were still tacky to the touch, I did a wash of metallic black acrylic paint.

To age the cannon, I used green seafoam acrylic mixed with equal parts white acrylic paint, a couple of drops of turquoise acrylic and then twice as much water vs. the paint to make a thick wash, I then dabbed this on all over the gun barrel to make it look like the bronze was oxidizing. Once dry. I covered the entire barrel and the inside of the muzzle with water-based poly to give it one more layer of water proofing, followed by 2 layers of spray matte finish.

For the fog machine I loaded it in the back of the tube by removing the breech and placing the cords through the hole cut in the bottom of the tube. After plugging everything in, I set the duration timer to 5 seconds and the interval to 60. And it worked okay. As you can see in teh video, the fog does not come blasing out of the cannon. My solution to this is to add a small high velocity fan to the back, behind the fog machine. This should help blast the fog out, but also serve to help cool the machine in the process. I'll update this post with the results. 

So that's it. The center piece to this year's Halloween display is done. But we are not done building yet. We still have an outhouse, coffins, home made grave stones, and  a wrecked row boat to make. And also have a plan to turn my other two fog machines into ground hugging fog makers. So lots more to come!

And then, there is the inside...