Congrats!
Once you get past the uncertainty, it's all a matter of persistence and the right tools, guided by a few rules.
I bought a signal cannon years ago at auction and found it to be loaded. It had a bore of about 7/8" but a rod would not seat to the vent hole, or anywhere near it, for that matter.
After fashioning a wiper from welding rods I went to work. The stuff that came out was amazing. I wish that I photographed it. No projectiles, but, in layers, newspaper, smokeless shotgun powder topped by newspaper followed by some silver colored firecracker powder topped by more newspaper and finally more smokeless shotgun powder topped by--get this-- a large wad of black plastic trash bag!
Things were so tightly compacted that I bent and distorted my rigged up wiper!
Had the nimrod who loaded this cannon been successful in cooking it off, it would have been catastrophic. His ignorance saved him, though, as his first layer was a wad of newspaper that very effectively blocked the vent.
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