Bowling Ball Mortar

In response to my recent punt gun post , Tim Romano sent in this video made by some of his friends. The subject line reads: “Punt Guns are For Sissies.” Tim’s friends have made a bowling ball mortar and they achieve some very serious hang-time and distance.

Until I saw this video I had no idea there were such things as bowling ball mortars. It turns there are lots of them. Through one of those happy accidents of life a bowling ball measure around 8 ½ inches across, just the right diameter to fit into a mortar made from an oxygen or acetylene tank. There’s a much smaller powder chamber welded to the breech end of most bowling ball mortars and it holds somewhere between 200 and 400 grains of black powder or pyrodex. It will send a bowling ball a long, long way, sometimes with decent accuracy. At one bowling ball shoot I read about the winning shot landed under six feet from a target flag set 200 yards from the firing line.