Hello, I'm a newcomer to this reddit, and I hope some of you can help me with my request. I have started a new channel focusing on history and tactics of warfare on YouTube, with one video already uploaded. I was thinking of making my next video about cannons (the old upto-19th century ones, not the contemporary artillery pieces). I want to focus on their history, manufacture, and firing techniques and implements through the ages, up to their eventual decline. There are very few resources available on the Internet that will help me to research this, so I hope someone knowledgeable in this field can help me out with the research. For reference, this is my new channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3rchZnZyBIh2CFb1GyCvXQ
Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your youtube channel, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring youtubers, based on past experience: some of them have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular video. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.
Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a youtube video, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.