Thread: Pirate window cannons

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With a few hours effort, you can turn the front of your house into the side of a pirate ship, complete with flashing cannons, as shown below:










This project works best if you have single-hung or double-hung windows, but with a little creativity, I'm sure you can adapt it for other window types. Once the cannon is mounted in the window frame, you should be able to close the window to keep the hot/cold air (depending on your location) inside the house.

For each window cannon, you will need the following materials. All the materials are readily available from hardware stores such as Home Depot or Lowes.

- Sheet of 1/4" plywood (I used luan)
- One 4' long x 8" diameter cardboard tube (sonotube) used for concrete forms, cut in half (two 2' lengths) or quarters (four 1' lengths)
- One 10" to 8" metal duct reducer
- Scrap wood to form a brace (I used 1" square trim stock)
- Sheet of craft foam board
- Five to seven small pan head screws (no precise size, whatever you have on hand)
- Clear polyurethane sealer
- Flat black paint (for plywood panel)
- Gloss black paint (for cannon barrel)
- String of inexpensive, flashing clear or red Xmas lights (to make the cannons "fire")

Tools required:

- Flat head or Phillips head screwdriver (depending on the screws you use)
- Utility knife
- Circular saw
- Drill with 2" hole saw attachment
- All-purpose glue

Instructions


1) Measure the inside dimensions of the window you plan to use.
On a single- or double-hung window, slide up the inside sash and if the window is equipped with a screen, raise that as well. You want the resulting plywood panel to rest within the window frame, and catch on the window jambs on either side as well as the bottom of the screen (see the photo above), so measure accordingly.

2) Using a circular saw, cut the plywood panel to these dimensions.
Note that luan has a nasty habit of splintering, so the greater the number of cutting teeth in the blade, the better.

3) Paint one side of the panel using flat black paint and set it aside to dry.

4) Cut the 4' long cardboard tube into a 1' (recommended) or 2' length.
I simply cut the tube in half to create two cannon barrels, each 2' long. In hindsight, I recommend cutting the tubes into 1' lengths instead of the 2' length I used. That saves on material cost and the cannon project more realistically from the window.

5) Squirt some glue around the outside of the 8" ring of the duct reducer, and insert the reducer into one end of the cardboard tube.
Some force may be required. You'll discover the supposed 8" diameter tubes vary wildly in actual size. You will likely need to cut a 1.5" slit in the end of the tube to allow the duct reducer to slide inside. As an alternative, you can skip the glue and slide the duct reducer over the tube instead of inside it. Either way, use one or two screws to secure the reducer to the tube.



6) Coat the newly formed barrel (reducer and tube) with clear polyurethane and set it aside to dry.

7) Create a simple wooden brace that the barrel can slide over and hang from.
Using 1" trim stock, for my 2' long barrels, I cut one 14" length of trim with square ends, and another 7" length with 45 degree mitered ends. The long piece is the arm and the mitered piece is the support. Predrill holes into both pieces and use a screw to attach the support to the arm, so that other end of the support is flush with the end of the arm (see the diagram above).

8) Trace the outline of the small (8" end) of the barrel on the painted side of the plywood panel.
You want the barrel centered, side-to-side and top-to-bottom, within the exposed portion of the panel when it sits in the window frame. Rather than actually tracing the barrel, you can simply mark a point centered side-to-side on the panel and at the top of where you want the barrel. If you are making several cannons, measure the dimensions of this point and write them down, so that all your cannons are level across windows on the same floor of your house.

9) Paint the barrel with gloss black paint and set aside to dry.

10) Predrill holes through the plywood panel and into the arm and support portion of the wooden brace.

11) Use two screws to secure the wooden brace to the painted side of the plywood panel (see the diagram above).

12) Using a 2" hole saw, cut a hole through the plywood panel, near where the support is attached to the panel and slightly off to one side.
The key to remember here is this: the barrel is going to slide over the wooden brace and hang from the arm. You want the hole you're drilling to be covered by the barrel, not exposed.

13) Take the now-dry barrel and trace a circle around the 10" muzzle onto a foam board sheet.

14) Draw a 6" diameter circle centered within the first circle, to create a 2" thick ring.

15) Using the utility knife, cut the ring out of the foam board.

16) Slide the barrel over the wooden brace until it's flush with plywood panel and secure it to the brace with two screws (see the exploded view diagram above).

17) Insert the foam board ring into the muzzle.
It should be a tight fit, requiring no glue.

18) Paint the foam board ring with the gloss black paint.

19) Once the paint is dry, drop a string of Xmas into the barrel and pull the plug end through the 2" hole in the plywood.
Optionally, you can dress up your cannon with bands around the barrel (using black weatherstripping foam) and add faces to the plywood panels like I did (using pirate face cutouts from a party store).

20) Mount the completed cannon inside a window.
I found the plywood panels sat within my window frames without any bracing required. But you should be able to close the inner sash of a singe- or double-hung window to maintain the heating/cooling in your house and prevent the panels from kicking back.

21) Plug the light string into an AC outlet and you're good to go!

Very cool. thanks for sharing this. Looks like a another project for this year.

Some vandalistic types think it's a right and proper "joke" to place firecrackers in the barrels of faux-cannons.
A local man welded together a very real looking larger than life Smith-Wesson 357 Magnum pistol/mailbox. About a week after the newspaper showed the world a photo of it someone dynamited it into tiny little pieces.
He was fortunate the lane to the house was long or else fragments might have got someone.
I weld walls about 1-1/2 inches inside the open barrels of my couple of faux-weapons to discourage the vandal mind.

HA HA HA! I'd love to do this to the house. Looks great!

Oh, and hubby says he's jealous.

He prefers mini-guns though

Your house looks so great. I love how you implemented this. I've saved your directions to my Halloween file since I'm not doing a pirate theme this year, but I will be at some time in the future. Pirates are among my favorite themes. arrrr.

This idea would also work for those who turn their house into a medieval castle.

Good job wisk i had that many windows

I've enjoyed your haunt photos before. The tutorial is very useful! Thanks.

Eric

cool. might have to use it.

Very cool tutorial!