A model cannon barrel I made recently

george wilson

george wilson

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I can't remember what I've posted here or on other forums at this point. I decided to do something just for fun. Well I just CAN'T,because if I don't get all the details just right on something I'm reproducing,it is just meaningless junk to me. So,I ended up making several special lathe tools for the ogee moldings and tripartite bands around the barrel,and form tools for the cascabel knob. It is patterned after the guns on the USS Constitution.

The special tools were filed from 1/4" square W1 steel and hardened and tempered. They work forever in brass,and will last a good while in tool steel if run slowly.

The barrel is about 9" long,turned from 1 1/4" 360 brass. It was made on the HLVH,which gives nice finishes(except the magnified pictures make the finish look great deal coarser than they are). The barrel would just barely swing clear over the carriage when turning little decorative rings on the ends of the trunnions.

The trunnions were screwed in with an interference thread fit with Loctite. Then,the gun was bored. It is functional. 45 caliber. Black powder and ball,of course.

I plan to polish it and make a Naval carriage for it. The picture at the bottom shows how close the cascabel knob came to hitting the carriage. Had it not made it,I'd have done this operation(detailing the trunnions) in the 16" lathe I have. I like using the Hardinge because it is quite tall,and the easiest lathe to manipulate and use that I have ever had.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger.

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Thank you,Bill. I am sort of an "artist machinist" more than anything else. I did fit right in at Williamsburg as toolmaker,where we were reproducing 18th. C. tools,surgical instruments,and other things that had artistic details at the time.



P.S.: I made that tool holder with the decorative finish. I got ONE with the Hardinge,and the tool post too(which was lucky). They wanted $275.00 back in the 90's for one tool holder!! Jon,my friend had gotten an HLV that used the same tool holders. The Hardinge holders were black,but NOT EVEN HARDENED at that price!! I took a long bar of steel and milled a long strip of dovetailed tool holders. Then,I cut them off like slices of bread. I made 20 holders,10 each. The largest effort was hand tapping all those holes!! There is a slot in the center of the male dovetail that has a long set screw to raise and lower the tool holder.
 
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Does your replica cannon fire? I wanted to make one capable of shooting a marble, but got sidetracked and didn't get it done yet. There was a You Tube video of a miniature cannon firing a marble and making a hole clean through the wall. So do keep the charge low and don't get hurt if you do decide to make it semi functional.

Bob
 
Rbeckett,I have done a good bit of shooting cannon,though NOT in a house!!:):):)

I have 2 other,larger cannon. One is 2 1/2" diameter at the breech,with a 1" bore. I shoot 1" ball bearings out of it. It is VERY deadly!! I shot a ball through an oak log about 6" diameter with it,with 400 grains of powder. It is machined out of steel bar stock. Makes a smoke cloud about 20' long!

My larger cannon is 5" at the breech,and is machined from tough Naval bronze half hard bar. It will fire a 1 3/8" ball bearing. on and I found thousands of these forged bearings at a junk yard. They haven't been tumbled to size yet,but are ideal cannon balls. We

bought several 5 gallon buckets of them. I haven't gotten the Naval carriage made yet. Indeed,I cannot lift the barrel due to spinal stenosis. I'll need a little help there. I made a similar cannon for my director's retirement years ago. I'll post some pictures of it IF I can find any that are not rotated on edge. I'm not good with computers.
 
Nice job on the cannon barrel George. When do we get to see the carriage?

I made a 1/4 scale Napoleon cannon a few years back (35?). It doesn't have as much detail as you put in yours, but all of the functional stuff is there. I made pockets in the barrel and silver soldered the trunnions into them. The barrel was made out of an old piece of brass round I had laying around and the carriage which was the biggest job, was made out of maple. It is .94 caliber and I shoot it regularly using home cast lead balls. It's loads of fun, the half a Dixie cup of black powder really gets the neighbors attention. There's a YouTube video of it in action here.

Tom
 
Very Cool George, very cool. Really nice work.
 
Nice work George, I love the detail. Sure would like to learn to make the tooling you used to create the detail. I have an old Remington Arms salute cannon which fires ten gauge shotgun blanks that was used for starting sail boat races years ago. It is great for celebrations, have to be careful where I shoot it though.

M.L.Woy
 
I'm not familiar with the Remington salute gun. However,the Winchester has a very weak breech design. It's o.k. for blanks,but some try shooting shells with shot in them from that gun. Not a good idea at all.
 
George as usual your stuff is outstanding. Thanks for letting us see it.

Jeff
 
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