"Remember, do not try anything you are about to see at home." "Ugh!" "On this episode of "Mythbusters"..." "Adam and Jamie get feisty with a bar-fight fable." "What's the matter, old man?" "Been too long since your last bar fight?" "...they want to know if an empty beer bottle really does more damage than a full one." "God, that is nasty!" "Meanwhile..." "You have to massage the leather." "Makes a better cannon." "...in a ballistic-material mystery from history..." "Fire!" "Is this where the legs were?" "...Kari, Grant, and Tory take on the tall tale of the Swedish and Irish cannons..." "Whoo-hoo!" "Let's go to battle!" "...made from leather." "Who are the Mythbusters?" "Adam Savage Here comes chaos!" "... Bye-bye!" "...and Jamie Hyneman." "I call it my little pop gun." "Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience." "Joining them..." "Kari Byron..." "Explosives and electricity." "Whoo!" "...Tory Belleci..." "This is your big chance." "...and Grant Imahara." "Now for something completely gratuitous." "They don't just tell the myths." "They put them to the test." "We're not gonna have to start drinking in the middle of the day again, are we?" "Luckily, no." "This is not a myth about getting drunk." "It's a myth about what happens after you've already gotten drunk and gotten yourself into a bar fight." "And the myth is that getting hit with an empty bottle is worse for you than getting hit with a bottle that's full." "Allow me to demonstrate." "No silver-screen bar-fight scene is complete without one." "However, unlike the movies, in real life, a bottle bash is extremely dangerous." "How dangerous?" "Well, award-winning forensic scientists list skull fractures concussions, and scalp lacerations among the possible injuries." "They also conclude that an empty-bottle smash will do more damage." "But is this really possible?" "Could a lighter, empty bottle really harm you more than a heavier, full one?" "So, how do you want to test this one?" "Fake bottle." "Don't do this at home." "No, seriously, how are you thinking we should test this?" "Exactly like that, but with real bottles." "Except with head protection." "We'll have a closer look at what kind of forces are involved." "Okay." "So, let the bar fight commence." "Even though after a few beers it might seem like a good idea to hit somebody over the head with a beer bottle, it's probably not." "Nevertheless, we feel inclined to get up close and personal in our testing." "And that's where this comes in." "This is a football helmet outfitted with a specially designed array of accelerometers that will register any movement of our skull and help us determine whether a full versus an empty beer bottle is more harmful." "Plus it's a nice excuse for me to hit Adam over the head with a bottle, which I regularly want to do." "You ready?" "You know, before I put this on and take some hits to the head, let's put this on a non-human analogue just to make sure it's safe, see what kind of forces are involved." "... Okay." "He's ready." "I'm ready." "We're ready." "Okay." "Safety-systems check." "Wow." "Uh, that's not what happens in the movies." "Now, it seems like these are a lot harder to break than we thought." "And I think that's because of a couple of main reasons." "What's the matter, old man?" "Been too long since your last bar fight?" "One is, in the movies, you're always seeing people smack each other over the head with bottles, and the bottles break fairly easily." "Well, those are fake bottles." "It's the movies." "And, number two, who among us hasn't dropped and broken bottles?" "They seem quite fragile." "But the fact is they're not." "They're actually built to ship." "They're built to last." "And when you look at shots like this..." "This... and this..." "It's pretty clear these things are tougher than they look." "Adam, however, is as tough as he looks Ow, ow." "... not very." "So, when our expert crunches the numbers..." "That was about 107 G's." "...the experiment takes a safer turn." "And about 100 G's is the average concussion that we see in the field." "I don't think I'm gonna be wearing that helmet today." "I don't blame you." "The helmet, doing what it was designed to do, was flexing on impact, absorbing energy and making it difficult to break the bottle." "Cue our hard-headed head stunt man with his crown of data- collecting accelerometers." "Huh." "Well, there you go." "Did you get a reading?" "Yeah, it's about 54 G's." "Awesome!" "Awesome." "But one data point does not a sample make." "So, in a frenzy of beer and broken glass... 33." "...Hard Man Hyneman smashes away... 11 G's." "...until he's satisfied with a sample set of seven... 34." "...which yields an average of 28 G's." "Awesome!" "Let's continue with an empty bottle." "Remember, the myth is that an empty bottle, when smashed, is more damaging than the full." "Are you peeing?" "No." "... Okay." "It's the comparison that's the key." "Okay, here we go." "Empty beer bottle." "And as the numbers come in, it's clear that comparison does not favor the myth." "13 G's." "So, it's about 11 G's." "Less G's-force to the head from the empties appears to indicate they do less damage than the full ones, but Adam's got an issue with the experimental design." "In general, the data seems to support the idea that it's not looking very good for the myth, but we're seeing huge variances in the "G's" load on this guy, depending on how hard Jamie swings," "which is very hard to control." "Clearly, moving forward, we're gonna need to remove the variance of the human arm and go with a mechanical solution to solving this problem." "All right, Kari, what do these things have in common?" "Okay, creamer, cheese, leather chicken, duct tape, and a steel pipe?" "Saturday night at Adam Savage's house?" "Very close." "No." "Saturday night at Jamie Hyneman's house?" "No." "Cannon." "Okay, I get everything but the leather." "Well, that's the next myth... we are gonna try to build a cannon out of nothing but leather." "...O-kay." "Really?" "... Absolutely." "In the 17 th century," "King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden came up with the idea." "It was a copper core with iron bands reinforcing it, mastic fabric, and, finally, the entire thing was wrapped in leather." "That's not a leather cannon." "That's a cannon covered in leather." "But wait." "There's more." "Later that century at the siege of Ballygally Castle," "Irish troops actually built a cannon using nothing but leather." "It was about 5 feet long and about 5 inches thick." "Leather cannon." "I like it." "The Mythbusters and cannons have a long and explosive history." "Ho ho ho!" "I think we killed Captain Kirk!" "There was a cheese-firing cannon..." "A cannon made from duct tape..." "And, not to mention, the famous cannon that fired chicken." "So, who better to get to the bottom of this mystery of history?" "Did the Swedes and Irish really make a viable and effective cannon from cow skin?" "So, my leather man, what's the plan?" "Well, we definitely need to build both versions," "Swedish and Irish, but before we do that," "I think we need a benchmark." "... What do you mean?" "Well, we've built proven concept cannons before, like the duct-tape cannon, but those weren't weapons of war." "I mean, we need something that can compete on the battlefield." "So, we need to compare it to a cast-iron period cannon." "Exactly... we'll find out how much black powder they used and how fast the projectiles come out." "Yeah, and then, on those specs, we'll be able to judge how well our two cannons are doing." "I like it." "So, first up, it's down to the bomb range to get the lowdown on period-accurate hardware from period-accurate experts." "Wow!" " This is Bonnie Blue." "The Confederates tended to name their cannon." "Yeah, we have a tendency to do that, too." "Let's get her off the truck and fire it up!" "We're at the Alameda County bomb range, where we're about to fire off a Civil War period cannon known as the parrot gun." "Yeah." "That looks good." "Now, the myth that we're working on says that the Irish and the Swedish created a leather cannon." "Now, this cannon's appro ximately the same size and fires appro ximately the same-size ammunition as the leather cannons." "You know it's go time when Grant's got his game face on." "It's go time!" "So, we're going to fire this off, check the muzzle velocity, and use that as a yardstick against the ones that we want to build." "Look at that." "Perfect." "If this doesn't stop a cannonball," "I don't know what will." "How about a stack of Union soldiers?" "Meanwhile, Grant is getting set up to measure what old Bonnie Blue can do." "As you know, on our show we love to use the high-speed camera, 'cause it gives us all these juicy, gorgeous shots of things that happen in a blink of an eye." "But today it's going to be a scientific tool." "Come on." "Let me show you." "So, we've aimed the high-speed camera at this scale, which is set up next to the cannon." "It has one-foot increments." "Given a known frame rate, we can count how many frames it takes for a cannonball to cross one of the increments." "And that would give us the cannonball's speed, which will form the benchmark for how well our Swedish and Irish cannons perform." "Hit it!" "Okay." "Let's talk black powder." "Firing off the cheese cannon... maybe this much black powder." "Clear." "Duct-tape cannon..." "maybe this much." "...Go ahead." "... Hit it." "And when we blew off Buster's leg, maybe that much." "...Good?" "... Hit it." "This is 6 ounces of black powder." "That is what we'll be firing in our parrot gun." "Gun is loaded." "All right." "Muzzle velocity test." "On your go!" "3... 2... 1... clear." "...Ohh!" "... Ohh!" "Yeah!" "Good shot!" "That thing split it!" "Look at that!" "...Ohh!" "Bull's-eye!" "... It is!" "Nice shot!" "So, the whole point of today's experiment was not to find out whether that cannon fires." "We know it does." "The point was to find out how fast a real cannon could fire a cannonball of the same size that the Swedish and Irish leather cannons were supposed to have fired." "Okay, I believe we have 389 miles per hour." "And we have that answer..." "389 miles per hour." "So, that's the benchmark." "If the team can get their mythical leather cannon to fire that fast, there could be some fact to this historical fable." "What we need, then, is some kind of mechanical bottle-bashing rig and a setup that helps us compare the injuries." "It's like a bar-fight robot." "Okay, well, you get started on that, and I'll go talk to the neuro guy and see what kind of injuries we're looking for on heads." "Okay." "So, while Adam builds a rig to bash brains with rigorous regularity Jamie talks to a bashed-brain expert." "So, what exactly happens in a concussion?" "A concussion is when you transfer a force, external, through the skull to the brain." "Think of the skull as a bo x, and you've got the brain inside that has the consistency of jell-o." "This is your brain." "I'm about to turn it into a jell-o mold." "Here we go." "There we go..." "one gelatin brain mold." "When a concussion occurs and force is delivered to the skull itself, the skull moves relative to the brain." "Brain stays in one place, and the skull moves against it." "That can bruise the brain that's hitting the skull, and it can actually damage the brain opposite that." "Oh, what am I doing?" "I'm making gelatin brains." "What are you doing?" "It's all a function of force, Jamie." "It's how much energy is transmitted to the skull and to the brain that determines how severe the concussion is or how much injury there is to the brain." "There we go!" "That's what I'm thinking!" "It sounds like the bottom line is that whatever kind of blow moves the head more violently is what's gonna cause more of a concussion, right?" "Absolutely." "All right, the whole purpose of this rig is to precisely, and at the same speed every time, swing a beer bottle into our model head to see if we get a concussion or how bad a concussion we get." "So, first, the arm is held in tension by this spring." "The vise grip here holds on to the beer until it swings into the head." "So, we release the pin, and the arm swings around all the way to the head." "Here's the head on the neck, weighing roughly about the same as a human head." "Hold on, let me add the pièce de résistance... a nice gelatin brain." "Now, we'll watch this on the high-speed." "We'll see the brain bounce around." "And if we can see a difference in how much the head moves and the brain bounces around, we might be able to tell something about the kind of concussion you'll get when someone breaks a bottle over your head." "But before the brain-bashing begins," "Adam needs to know exactly how fast he needs to swing his bottles to ensure they break." "For that, he's got a smaller version of the rig..." "And a pig." "Here's the experimental setup." "I'm gonna take these bottles and twhack this pig right in the brain until they shatter." "This arrow right here and the high-speed camera above it will tell me the exact speed at which these bottles shatter, both full and empty." "This is gross science in action in 3, 2, 1." "Awesome!" "Gross but awesome." "It's a horror movie, all right." "But throughout the violence of the hams..." "This is for the money right here, all right?" "...Adam gets enough hits..." "That has to hurt." "...with full and empty bottles..." "Success!" "...to get a good idea of the speed they need for a guaranteed smash." "And that speed turns out to be about 50 feet per second, or 34 miles per hour." "So, now that they can calibrate the big rig's swing speed," "Jell-O Head is ready to take one for the team." "Kari, Grant, and Tory are delving deep into ballistics history to uncover the mystery of two cannons made in a tannery." "We're trying to replicate two historical cannons, both referred to as "leather cannons. "" "The first one is the Swedish cannon." "It's got a copper core tube that's wrapped in some iron bands and some other stuff and basically has a leather veneer." "The second canon is the Irish cannon." "This is from the early 1700s." "And, now, this one is a more authentic leather cannon, if you ask me." "This one's entirely made out of leather." "With the hide soaked to make it more malleable, it's time to focus on the first of the builds." "Guess which one it is?" "It's a new dance." "It's called "Directing Traffic. "" "So, here's how you build an authentic 17 th-century, all-leather Irish cannon... paint on the glue..." "Insert a one-inch-thick plug at the back end..." "Roll the hide around a steel form..." "Hopefully, this is gonna be strong enough to withstand exploding black powder." "...laminate enough layers to ensure a one-inch-thick barrel with a five-inch diameter..." "Is it just me, or does our bad-ass cannon look more like a hot dog?" "...tie it off and wait for it to dry." "It's not the prettiest thing, but I think it'll work." "That's what they said when they hired me." "With the Irish cannon wrapped up and ready to blow," "Grant, in a more culturally sensitive fashion than Tory, is going to give us the background on the Swedish cannon." "Now, in the 1600s in Europe, everybody had pretty much the same design for a cannon... giant, cast-iron." "Unfortunately, these cannons were incredibly heavy and cumbersome, and it took several men and several horses just to move them into position." "Along came the king of Sweden, King Gustavus Adolphus ll, who had a brand-new idea for an army, an army that was incredibly mobile that could deploy quickly." "He threw out this idea of a cannon and came up with something that was lighter and more portable." "Now, in truth, there wasn't much leather in a Swedish leather cannon." "In fact, it had a thin-walled copper tube for its barrel..." "It's your basic sawed-off leather cannon." "...with a brass plug on the end." "That was covered with several layers of canvas soaked in mastic." "What the heck is mastic?" "Well, it's a type of resin." "Now, we don't have mastic, but what we do have is a two-part epo xy resin." "On top of that were four iron bands to reinforce it." "Then more canvas and mastic." "They'd paint another layer." "That way, it gets embedded." "And when it hardens, it's gonna be very strong." "And, finally, on the top, was leather." "Now, it was called a leather cannon, but, in fact, it was a hybrid." "It had a metal barrel." "The important thing is that it was lightweight and mobile." "Mobile, you say?" "Well, with these wheels, they can roll on down to the bomb range..." "Charge!" "Whoo-hoo!" "...where we'll find out whether these mythical cannons, built to spec, could have really worked." "Okay, here we go." "One full-beer-bottle concussion test in 3, 2, 1." "It looks great." "Seems to work." "Except it doesn't." "A look at the high-speed Whoa!" "... Wow!" "...confirms the beer isn't clear." "The problem is, the beer is obstructing our ability to see the brain." "...Yeah." "... Isn't that always the way?" "So the way to go is carbonated H20." "We're ready." "Let's do it." "Full-beer-bottle concussion test... 3, 2, 1." "Didn't break." "...High-speed." "... High-speed." "Wow." "That's a lot of force." "You see how the skull moves and then the brain's in one place." "... Yeah." "Hits the side of the skull on the front side." "And then look at that... the brain's going completely to the opposite." "Oh, wow." "Look at the waves inside the jell-o." "That's what happens in real life." "The full-bottle hit clearly falls into the "not good" category." "Another wasted beer." "Cue the empty-bottle comparison." "Somewhere, kittens are crying." "What do you think is gonna happen, buddy?" "Really?" "No, I never saw it that way before." "Okay." "...You ready for the empty bottle?" "... Ready." "All right, empty-bottle concussion test... 3, 2, 1." "I don't even need to see the high-speed." "I can tell by looking at the guy's face that he's messed up." "Sure, he's not a pretty sight, but he's actually a lot better off than he was after the last test." "The lateral movement of the skull is significantly reduced with the empty bottle." "Boy, there's nowhere near the amount of head movement relative to brain." "So, it is moving around, but not near as much as it was with the full bottle." "Yeah." "Yeah, you're delivering less force with an empty bottle, no question." "... Awesome." "That's, like, a result." "Let's put the two up next to each other on the screen just like that." "Okay, now play." "Look at that!" "It couldn't be clearer." "The full bottle is far worse." "That's another headache for this forensic-science inspired myth." "So far, Adam and Jamie have yet to see a sign that an empty bottle, when smashed, can cause more damage." "But they're not done yet." "The additional mass in a full bottle does seem to impart more energy to a target skull when it's broken over it, and that can lead to a concussion, but we're talking about head injury here." "And so that could also be skull fractures." "It could be skin lacerations." "So we're gonna have a close look at those, too." "Buddy, remember that time I built the machine to swing bottles of beer at your head?" "No, you don't!" "Mmm." "That's a delicious memory." "Now what we're gonna do is test out the Swedish leather cannon, in which most of the metal of the barrel has been replaced by other materials to make it lighter." "Whoo-hoo!" "Let's go to battle!" "Then we'll move on to the Irish leather cannon, which it's all leather." "All right, folks, what I have here is 6 ounces of black powder." "This is what we're gonna be using to propel our cannonball." "Now, when we fired the parrot gun, it was traveling at 389 miles per hour." "That is fast, the same amount of energy... it would be like hitting a baseball going 1,200 miles per hour." "Folks, this is something you do not want to play with." "So, with a firm grip on the explosive potential involved and all of the technical jargon..." "Okay, where's the pokey stick?" "...the team lock and load." "Venting!" "All right, loaded." "Okay, gonna go hot." "...You ready?" "... I'm ready." "Fire in the hole!" "This is Swedish cannon in 3... 2, 1." "...Yeah!" "... Yeah!" "Look at that!" "It worked!" "Or did it?" "Now, when we came out here, some of us thought that this was going to shoot off like a cannon, some of us thought it might explode." "It pretty much did both." "Holy crap!" "Look at this." "It just completely blew out the back end." "Well..." "One-shot wonder." "We actually had the cannonball shoot out of one end while the end bits shot out the other." "It's not looking too good." "But a quick assessment of the targets, and the team are much more positive." "Hey, it did the job, come on." "Give it up for the Swedish cannon!" "It didn't make it through the sandbags, but it did make it through the second barrel." "And once the numbers are crunched, it gets even more interesting." "So, we tested our Swedish cannon with the same-size and -weight cannonball, the same amount of black powder." "I'm getting 667 feet per second, which is over 450 miles an hour." "That's 50 miles an hour faster than our parrot gun." "... What?" "!" "And I've got to say..." "it's performance was equal to or a little bit better than the all-metal cannon." "It had a muzzle velocity that was higher." "Maybe it was a tighter pack, so, that way, it shot the ball faster... who knows?" "We only missed the "x" by that much." "Minor problem..." "we blew out the breach." "But bear in mind, this was our first attempt to make this type of cannon." "I'm sure the Swedish didn't get it right the first time." "So as far as a battlefield weapon, the Swedish cannon had superior maneuverability with very good accuracy." "Unfortunately, longevity could be a problem." "And as it turns out, historically, it was." "So, in the context of the parrot-rifle performance benchmark, the lightweight hybrid cannon matched up, which just leaves the Irish question." "The wheels came off." "Good sign." "So, we've got 6 ounces of black powder All right, ready to load?" "... Black powder." "...a 3-pound cannonball..." "Ooh." "That's nice and tight." "...and a barrel that's one inch thick of leather." "You add all that up, I think you're gonna get "boom. "" "All right, everybody, clear muzzle from now on." "This whole idea of building a cannon out of leather, it's absurd." "Run away!" "Loaded!" "But, I mean, if you're desperate and that's the only material you have available to you," "I guess, sure, why not try it?" "But, I mean, we know how powerful exploding black powder is." "Come on, Irish leather cannon!" "All right, this is Irish leather cannon." "Ready?" "The forces involved..." "I mean, is a one-inch wall of leather gonna be enough to contain it in order to launch this cannonball?" "Fire in the hole!" "I'm very curious to find out." "My feeling is it's probably not gonna work." "...2, 1." "Aah!" "Whoa!" "Nice!" "Aah!" "Aah!" "Look what happened!" "Look where the cannonball is." "It's like two feet in front of it." "Bink!" "It was more dangerous to be behind this cannon than in front of the cannon." "Yep, it's pretty clear the Irish cannon failed on all counts." "The back end blew out, and even with modern glue, the barrel untraveled, so the guys can't even try again." "What we were looking for for this myth to be confirmed was very simple..." "lethality." "Say the Irish were fighting leprechauns, it might be lethal." "Look at how far the cannonball went." "We tested the parrot rifle and the Swedish leather cannon." "And with the same-size cannonball and the same amount of gunpowder, they were able to launch the ball at 350 to 450 miles per hour." "Now, as far as the Irish leather cannon goes I can't call that lethal." "... No." "...with the best available information, built to those specifications, this one is busted." "But that does not mean we're gonna end here." "We are gonna see what it would take to build a working cannon out of nothing but leather." "It might not be possible, but we're gonna try." "But what about other types of head trauma?" "What about a skull fracture?" "To find out, Jamie..." "That's what I'm talking about." "...is taking a piece of pig skull... 7 millimeters." "Same thickness as a human skull." "...to calibrate and manufacture a polyurethane plastic that fractures in exactly the same way as a human skull." "Pulled from the pan while pliable, he forms it into shape before it hardens." "We've got the base, and we've got this insert that goes over this cavity." "And when we hit it with a beer bottle like so, if we get a fracture, we know that we would have fractured a real skull." "To get a realistic mass," "Jamie adds a brain's weight of ground beef." "That's it. 6 pounds." "Meanwhile, Adam has built a bar for the soon-to-break-out bar fight..." "Welcome to the "Mythbusters" Bar." "Can I interest you in an empty beer?" "...which means Meat Head, with his inability to duck, is about to get a headache." "Mr. Hyneman says it's time to bash some heads in and chew some gum." "And he's fresh out of gum." "Take it away." "Okay, skull-fracture rig in 3, 2, 1." "All hell broke loose." "We've got broken bottles, we've got broken head, and meat spilling out all over the place." "Adam's no doctor, but "broken head" and "meat spilling out"" "is a fairly accurate diagnosis." "Oh, man!" "That is... it's clearly shattered the skull." "Totally shattered the skull." "The rig worked." "Yep, Meat Head did us proud, huh?" "All we need now is to try this with an empty bottle." "Yep." "More data!" "More data, with a side of sampling and a comparative-observation salad coming right up." "Empty bottle of beer coming right up." "Buddy, we're gonna do this at least one more time, and if it's any consolation, it's gonna hurt you a lot more than it's gonna hurt me." "When you're ready." "Empty bottle into skull-fracture rig." "3, 2, 1." "Now, that's what I'm talking about. 1." "Now you've broke it!" "That's why we can't have nice things!" "Nose fracture." "No fracture on the skull." "The whole purpose of this experiment is to figure out if it's worse to get a full bottle broken over your head or an empty bottle broken over your head." "Personally, I want neither." "But if I had to choose, especially when it comes to skull fractures, like this test here, the full bottle delivered more damaging skull-fracturing force than the empty bottle." "But we're not done for, upon closer examination," "Jamie and I note many lacerations in the skull of this meat head." "And we wonder, perhaps in the area of lacerations, an empty bottle might be worse than a full bottle." "We don't know, so we're gonna stretch some skin over one of these heads and start hitting that with broken bottles." "Yeah!" "Down at the bomb range, the myth of the Irish all-leather cannon took a hiding." "I just can't call that lethal." "No." "I mean, that's pathetic." "But our team of tanners aren't done yet." "They've set themselves the challenge of building an effective, viable cannon from nothing but cowhide." "You have to massage the leather." "Makes a better cannon." "Actually, what makes a better leather cannon is attention to detail." "And this time around, the team is going all out to iron out the issues from its last outing." "All right, so, one thing we figured out the other day when we fired off our pure-leather cannon... when the ball came out, it actually delaminated the inside of the cannon." "So what I'm doing right now is scraping up this leather enough so that the glue will bite down on this leather, and it'll stay together when we fire off the next cannon." "So, just like everything else on this cannon, we're beefing it up, so to speak." "This is our super breach plug." "Made out of 42 layers of leather." "This is gonna get rolled into the cannon." "Charge goes here." "Cannonball goes here." "When we set it off, hopefully it goes like "ba-boom,"" "and that like "ba-boing. "" "Now I'm working on the breach section." "And what I have done is take the same cowhide, cut it down to 2-inch-wide strips." "I'm putting on the contact cement on both sides, and then I'm laying those strips lengthwise around the back end of the cannon." "This is gonna strengthen up our breach area." "So, that way, it is strong enough to withstand the explosion of black powder in order to get our cannonball to launch." "With the back end sufficiently built up, glued, and beaten into submission, the team is optimistic about their chances of success." "This is the blast chamber, and we're talking about a 12-inch diameter." "Not only that, but the breach has been reinforced with so many straps that we have about that much holding up the back end." "I think there might be a possibility that we've made ourselves a working leather cannon." "Now, I have a few finishing touches..." "Just to, you know, give it a little bit of beauty." "So, under a veil of secrecy, our material girl applies her fashionable finishing touches." "Then it's back down to the bomb range... drumroll, please for the big reveal." "I was getting bored with the plain, old leather cannon, since we did so many." "I thought, why not jazz it up a little but?" "It's a designer cannon!" "Wow." "That's crazy." "That is funny." "You just pimped this cannon out." "It looks the business, but can it pack the punch... a 6-ounce black-powder punch?" "When we ignite this, it's gonna expand to three 55-gallon drums of gas." "That's a lot of energy, and that is what's gonna fire our ball out of our cannon." "Or blow our cannon up." "Either way, it's gonna be cool." "If I'm gonna be testing what happens to someone's scalp when they're hit over the head with a bottle," "I need a suitable scalp analogue." "And to find it, "Dr. Franken-Hyn-Eman"" "figures out some scalp attributes he wants to emulate." "That's moving about the same as the skin over my skull." "Poked through at 2.43 pounds." "This is very sort of fibrous." "Next, he finds the artificial materials with those physical attributes." "A vinyl epidermis absorbent subcutaneous layer and of course blood..." "lots of blood." "Oh, no." "I have blood everywhere." "It all comes together in a disturbingly accurate analogue of human skin." "The epidermis goes on it like so." "And when I cut it, with any luck, it's gonna bleed." "And with that..." "There you go." "...our fake-skinned Meat Head is ready to take one for the team." "Let the lacerations begin." "Laceration test with a full beer bottle." "3, 2..." "God, that is nasty!" "...1!" "Uh-oh!" "Oh, there's definitely some cuts there." "Yep." "Oh, it bleeds." "Nasty." "Nasty." "And if it was needed, a further graphic illustration of how dangerous it is to use a bottle as a weapon." "Just put that there, and we'll put the other one there." "And we know that that's our full bottle, and we'll compare it to the empty one." "... Okay." "Okay, here we go." "Laceration test... empty beer bottle into our meat buster." "3, 2, 1." "A successful smash." "And, as with the full bottle, it's immediately obvious damage was done." "I like my fake skin." "It's nice fake skin." "And an up-close comparison sees very little difference in the damage to that skin between the two tests." "I don't know about you, but I look at these, and they look pretty much equivalent to me." "You know, give or take a nick or two, it's the same." "Yeah." "The original myth is that having an empty bottle broken over your head is worse for you than having a full bottle broken over your head." "Well, from our testing, from the standpoint of your brains, it's not true." "You'll get a much worse concussion from a full bottle than an empty one." "And also from our testing, on bones, the full bottle is also worse." "It's much more likely to cause a skull fracture than an empty bottle." "Now, with the skin-laceration test, actually, for the first time, they're about even." "But that still doesn't make the statement that the empty bottle is worse supportable." "So it's still not looking very good." "In fact, I'd almost say it's busted." "O- kay, the myth that it's worse to have an empty bottle broken over your head than a full bottle." "Let's recap where we stand from the standpoint of your brains." "... It's busted." "From the standpoint of your skullbone." "Also busted." "From the standpoint of your skin." "No difference." "...Well, you know where that leaves this myth." "... Busted." "Totally busted." "Kari, Grant, and Tory are about to find out if leather can be a lethal cannon." "This is our target..." "we have a barrier of milk backed by a triangulation of three water barrels." "Why milk?" "Well, because it's gonna look really cool on high-speed when our cannonball crashes into it." "And speaking of high-speed, with the aid of the high-speed and this scale here, we're going to be able to catch the velocity of the ball and see if it matches our parrot gun." "And finally, here we have our designer-inspired ultimate, completely reinforced, 100%- genuine leather cannon." "If only the Irish had something this stylish at the siege of Ballygally Castle, well, who knows if the cannon would've exploded?" "But at least they'd be fighting in style." "However, it's not style, but performance substance that ultimately matters." "Remember, the benchmark we're using is the parrot rifle's muzzle velocity of 389 miles per hour." "Plus, it has to be capable of multiple, successful firings." "Oh, man, this is the prettiest cannon I ever seen." "Kari has disguised our cannon as a purse." "All it needs now is Jamie's favorite slippery solution." "I saw this on "Dirty Jobs" once." "...Really?" "... Yeah." "Except for it was a cow, wasn't it?" "...Yeah, whatever." "... Don't worry, Betsy." "So, why are we lubing up the barrel?" "Well, the last time we tried the Irish leather cannon, built to historical specifications, the cannonball had a difficult time getting out of the barrel, and it delaminated the innermost layer." "We don't want that to happen this time." "So we're adding lube, and hopefully, it'll come shooting right out the end." "...You in?" "Yep." "...That's it." "... Okay." "Let's do it." "I think we have a very good chance... 80% at least." "The other 20% is "it explodes. "" "So, it's time to find out if the bling leather cannon..." "Can." "Here we go." "Designer-inspired cannon." "3, 2, 1." "Whoo!" "It worked!" "100% leather!" "We should fire that again!" "...And it didn't blow up!" "... Whoo!" "We did it!" "We made a leather cannon!" "Yeah!" "The reaction says it all." "We made a leather cannon, and it worked!" "From back behind the blast shields, the test looks to be a success, but up close, the evidence begins to contradict their initial reaction." "Punched through the carton, no problem." "...Here." "... Hey!" "Unlike the parrot rifle, which easily punched through two water barrels, the leather cannon only just pierced the milk carton." "You're definitely gonna give somebody a bruise with that." "A lethality assessment that's backed up by the numbers from the high-speed." "...So, I've got 52.5 miles per hour." "... Wow." "You could drive faster than that cannonball came out of the cannon." "Yeah, but, look, it was entirely made out of leather." "...I think that's awesome." "... That is awesome." "The less-than-lethal muzzle velocity was caused by what is the final nail in the leather-cannon coffin... the delamination of the barrel and deformation of the combustion chamber." "And that can only mean one thing." "It looked like it was gonna be plausible for a second there, but if you can only get one shot out of it," "I think this one's busted." "Busted." "But, man!" "What a way to go out!" "That's looking cool." "At least we got one good shot out of it." "Leather..." "it's good for fashion, not good for artillery."