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Show Cannon booms Creation by Cedar City youth provides realism to Shakespearean performances , lathe with Mr. Starleys help. Ritchie tapered and finished the outside of the cannon barrel bar-rel and welded it to an axle bar. He then made a wooden trailer in the school woodworking wood-working shop and attached the trailer, cannon, and axle to a pair of six-inch wheels. The entire article weighs a-bout a-bout 15 pounds and is 18 inch-es inch-es long overall. Ritchie figures that he spent approximately $15 on the cannon and expended some 30 hours of time. The weapon is capable of shooting lead balls and Ritch-. Ritch-. le occasionally takes it out in the country for a little target practice. He was somewhat surprised to have it used in an authentic cannon scene but felt when he made it that it had quite a number of possibilities. pos-sibilities. He has 'not decided on his next project but is looking around for an idea for his next metals class. It is bound in be something unusual. The loud booms heard on the Southern Utah State College Col-lege campus several nights each week recently have been caused by a small, but real, cannon. The weapon is the creation of Ritchie Bauer, 11, son of Mr. and Mrs. Keith Bauer, Cedar City. One day several weeks ago, Mr. Bauer overheard Peter Co-della, Co-della, business manager for the Utah Shakespearean Festival, Fest-ival, say that cannon-like sound effects were needed for the Festival production of "Othello." Mr. Bauer volunteered volun-teered the information that his son owned a cannon that made a very loud noise, and Ritchie Bauer and his unique homemade war instrument were in business. Each time that "Othello" has been performed since July Ju-ly 17, opening date of the Festival, Ritchie has appeared appear-ed behind the scenes just prior pri-or to the time the sound effect ef-fect was needed. At a given signal, he ignited the powder with which the cannon was loaded and immediately produced pro-duced a resounding report which could usually be heard throughout the community. A fast reloading job was required re-quired since two booms were needed for each performance. A large wooden cannon replica repli-ca was used on stage for the benefit of the audiences. Ritchie was assisted in his assignment by Jim McCon-nell, McCon-nell, 16, son of Mr. and Mrs. Bill McConnell, Cedar City. Jim is the owner of an authentic auth-entic percussion type muzzle-loader muzzle-loader rifle. Ritchie and Jim figured a way to produce more accurate timing with the cannon by igniting the powder with a shot from the rifle. When asked how he came to build a cannon, Ritchie explained ex-plained that he had always been interested in guns and thought a cannon would bo a good project for his metals class projects under the direction di-rection of LaVoy Starley, industrial in-dustrial arts instructor, and decided to construct the cannon can-non in his spare time. After devising a design, he obtained a metal bar from a Cedar City machine shop and bored it out on the school Ui J Itj IT m t '.hh If :' ilnfii- PROVIDES THE BOOMS. Ritchie Bauer with a can-i non he built as a project in his metals class at Cedar, Junior High School. The cannon was used for sound effects in the Shakespearean Festival performances of "Othello" during the season just , ended. |