Saturday, October 01, 2011

If I gain any more weight you could make me into a cannon ball.

http://www.wtsp.com/news/topstories/article/213247/250/Company-will-load-loved-ones-ashes-into-ammunition

5 comments:

an Donalbane said...

Very odd, though I wouldn't say I'm totally opposed to the idea.

Would think that the 250 shotshells might use the better part of the pound, inasmuch as the standard 12 ga. payload is about 1-1/4 oz, though here they're using the ash with, not instead of, the shot (the same weight of ash clearly would not fit in the hull, having a radically different density).

The rifle and pistol bullets are perplexing to me, though. Not sure if they're using standard hollow nose, enhancing the cavity (drilling), or have some specially formed projectile jackets, but I imagine that they would only be able to fit a few grains of remains in each 'bullet'. There are 7000 grains/pound. The standard .30 cal. bullet is normally 168 grains, but due to density issues would be quite less. Pistol bullets typically run 115 (9mm) to 240 (.44 cal.) grains.
I would almost guarantee accuracy with any of these to be abysmal, except for the scattergun shells, in which the ash might function similar to grex buffering in commercial loads.

Traditional 24, 32, and 42 pound cannon balls have diameters of 5.55, 6.10, and 6.68 inches, so maybe a reasonable amount of cremains could be loaded into such a sphere (cremains typically run 3.5% of live weight).

It'd probably be simpler just to buy a fleet of Estes rockets at Hobby Lobby...

todd said...

Huh, huh. You said enhancing the cavity. Huh, huh.

an Donalbane said...

Yeah, but the turn of phrase that I was more proud of was grains of remains.

todd said...

"Cremains" was good too.

an Donalbane said...

Actually, cremains is in the lexicon - I can't take credit for that.