Shooting reconstructed medieval Bombards
 

Last week I had the opportunity to to attend the shooting of a reconstructed medieval bombard of the fellow reenactment society Albrechts Bössor from Sweden at Middelaldercentret Nyköbing in Denmark. Especially the 1.000 g Load was the loudest bang I heard in my life so far - despite wearing ear protectors. The bombard weights about 300 kg and was reconstructed after an original from the city of Cologne.

Bombard with 500 g powder load
https://youtu.be/G8fvueTCaOE

And the same with a 1000 g powder load
https://youtu.be/mdkmpPWpT68

V good.
What happened that all the renactors were laughing when the 1 kg was fired off.
Cheers
Ken

Bravo! I'd like to see video of some live fire showing the effect of these cannonballs on their targets. Would be interested in some details of the actual processes used in making this copy.

By the way, is that the base of a trébuchet that I see off in the corner in the left side of the frame? Years ago, a UK friend alerted me to a bunch of guys in England who built and shot full-sized ones. They managed to hurl small refrigerators, and dead pigs a respectable distance and were planning to lob a spinet piano from an especially large machine they were building.

I hope that this sport catches on. Imagine a Turkish, with a good-sized reproduction of one of Mehmet the Conqueror's bombards, setting it off the shadow of the Theodosian walls that still stretch across the landward side of Istanbul.

It was the first time after that the bombard was shot with 1 kg of gunpowder and the 9th shot of the piece so far. The noise of the bang exceeds all expectations of the participants and that was the reason for the laughs.
We were shooting next to the trebuchets of the Middelaldercentret Nyköbing.