SpudFiles

I found an abandoned bike in front of my house. Bike frames are made out of
T6061 aluminum, right? I'm going to chop off the main part of the frame and use it as a barrel or chamber. But...If I only have one T6061 pipe, how can I build a cannon out of this? Is there a way to build a cannon using only one pipe?

Like this:

That cannon only uses one pipe. So does a single pipe cannon work?

i have two single pipe guns, 2" in diameter, works great, but with such a small diameter pipe, fuel might stick to the walls. just something to think about, but i would think butane and propane and similar gases will work

i doubt it is aluminum at all

You don't need 2 pipes for a cannon. You could just push the ammo about a third of the way down the tube, and fuel it from the back.

and why would you doughbt its aluminum my frames aluminum

I'm sure it's aluminum.

Is it possible to make a pneumatic? I can cut the pipe in half, get a union of some sort, make some burst disks, bolt one end of the pipe up, add a schrader valve, and sha-bam, a simple burst disk cannon. Will this work? Should I go with a combustion or pneumatic for this?

D-Roc wrote:Bike frames are made out of T6061 aluminum, right?

Yup. Aluminum frame bikes are typically 6061 T6. Steel frame bikes are typically some flavor of chrom/moly alloy. Unless you have access to some way-serious power tools, steel is too hard to cut and too small bore to be worth the effort.

Scavenged aluminum on the other hand might be a great material. I note though that most aluminum frame bikes I see have an oval cross section on the main (big bore) tubes for directional strengthening.

Post your results. If it seems like a fruitful approach, I'll hit the next police auction in my neck of the woods and report back on it's value as a souce of aluminum tube stock.