How To Make A Minecraft Cannon
Cannons are all the rage in minecraft right now, and it's easy to understand why. Who wouldn't want the extreme joy of shooting a pig into the ether? Cannons can be adapted to hurl all sorts of things great distances, including mobs, animals, blocks and even yourself if you're up to the challenge.
Cannon Ingredient List
You will need the following ingredients to make a cannon:
Redstone Dust. Found by mining for redstone. Redstone requires a metal pick to mine. Mining for redstone with a standard stone pick will get you nothing at all. Redstone dust can be placed on blocks in minecraft to create the minecraft equivalent of electrical wires.
A Lever. Levers are crafted by sticking a stick on top of a piece of cobblestone. They are very easy to make indeed and will create the firing mechanism for your cannon.
A Pressure Plate. Pressure plates are easily crafted by placing three pieces of stone in the bottom layer of your 3x3 crafting grid
TNT. TNT is crafted by alternating gunpowder and sand in the crafting grid in such a manner that you use five pieces of gunpowder and four blocks of sand. Gunpowder can only be collected from creepers, so expect to sacrifice your immortal soul a few times in order to obtain this stuff.
How To Build The Cannon:
Build the 'barrel' of the cannon with the material of your choice. Cobblestone makes for quick cannons and can be picked up in vast quantities pretty much anywhere you care to look, obsidian makes for indestructible cannons, but is much harder to mine. (You need a diamond pick to mine obsidian.)
The basic barrel of a cannon can be as small as two blocks high on one side, one block high on the other and three blocks long.
Put your pressure plate at the business end of the cannon, where all the firing of things is going to be taking place, and place a bucket of water at the back of the cannon, so that it flows forward towards the pressure plate.
Then take your red stone dust, and from the high side of the cannon, begin to place the red stone wires so that they make their way down next to the pressure plate. Remember to leave a block free to place your lever so that you can fire your cannon.
Your cannon is now nearly complete. Place your TNT inside the 'barrel' of the cannon, (placing it over the water is fine, indeed is necessary, ensuring that the 'fuse' ends with the TNT. Place the object you wish to send hurtling through the air on the pressure plate, then go back and pull the switch!
Boom! Your cannon will explode (well hopefully not, hopefully only the TNT will explode and hurl your desired object into the great blue yonder.)