Swivel gun

Thought I would post a pic of my latest acquisition. 28mm bore (1 and 1/8 inches), 28" from touch-hole to muzzle (35" overall, muzzle to cascabel). Birmingham proofed to 4oz powder and 8oz ball. Held in the UK on a Shot Gun Certificate.
I shall be giving it its first airing next weekend at a public demo (firing blanks, it also has a separate proof for a 4oz blank charge). Then later in the spring I will be blowing 1" mild steel balls out of it! I doubt I will be able to get a single 8oz ball to fit, but I guess I could double shot......

Can you show the accessories, like rammer, linstock, etc.?

It looks like it could put a grin on your face from ear to ear!

Looks pretty well made, though the trunnion's are a little long and thin....

That is pretty.

Absolutely beautiful. :bow: Congrats, Joolz. :hatsoff:

The trunnions are 32mm diameter (1 and 1/4") and are coarse-threaded so they can be removed to mount the barrel onto the cradle. They are a little long, but I guess that helps to get a good purchase on them to remove them. They could, however, do with losing an inch....
I can't argue with the engineering - it's a well made piece and, considering it is essentially the equivalent of a 3 bore shotgun, it is massively over-proofed so I have no qualms over its functionality (it was built from the outset to handle heavy loads of ball). The head of the cannon club I belong to believes we can possibly skip a steel ball out to 1800 yards. That may be ambitious, but it will be fun trying.....
As for the accessories, I've made a worm, a rammer and I'm waiting on some sheepskin for the mops.

I am freakin jealous! Slobber

Unless you have unlimited range be careful skipping steel balls especially by steel ball you mean ball bearing.... they can go much further than intended..... and end up in places you never wanted them to be..... lead balls are better they tend to flatten out when they hit things and don't tend to bounce so far..... I know of one case of a ball bearing being fired at a metal plate it rebounded just missing the shooters head, it then struck the wheel of a truck and rebounded for another try at the shooters head.... ball bearings are not good choices for ammo.....

We have 7 miles of army artillery ranges to play on, but I take your point. I will be using mild steel balls that have not been hardened (unlike ball bearings) so they are less likely to bounce back or damage the barrel. I get them from architectural blacksmiths suppliers, as they are used for welding to railings or gates as ball finials. They are very regular and spherical. They are also used for grinding in industrial ball mills (but make sure you get the unhardened ones, as they usually give a choice of hardness). They may be a lot lighter than lead, but they cost a tiny fraction of lead ones....
For busting clays (another thing we do at the cannon club) we use canvas shot bags full of pea gravel, again, considerably cheaper (and more environmentally acceptable) than using hundreds of lead balls....

Nice stand i always wanted a swivel gun but never could devisea nice stand

Well your 28mm bore is slightly larger than a 4-bore (26.72mm) so I bet a lead ball of about 21mm would work in your gun, no? That would give you a 3.5mm gap around the circumference of the projectile.

So take a look at Lil Mac Molds , and scroll down until you see "cannon ball molds" on the left side of the page... their smallest cannon ball mold makes two balls, one 1 oz and one 2 oz, and the 2 oz. should be 21mm and the 1 oz should be 17 mm.

If you scroll down farther you will find Lil Mac Cannon Ball Sinker Molds, and the first one makes an assortment, including 1 and 2 ounce ball, BUT it also makes 3/4 ounce and 1/2 ounce (plus larger sizes of ball), in case you wanted to make a grapshot charge out of the smaller projectiles...

You could fashion your own out of lead or lead alloy and have no ricochet problem as you do with steel, or you might be able to make them out of ceramics if they have a lead ban where you shoot.

LD

Cheers, some promising moulds there. However, 21mm is a bit too small. I would prefer a straight inch (25.4mm) as there is more than enough windage on the 1" steel balls I have at the moment.

Joolz said:

Cheers, some promising moulds there. However, 21mm is a bit too small. I would prefer a straight inch (25.4mm) as there is more than enough windage on the 1" steel balls I have at the moment.

Click to expand...

Give Jeff Tanner a shout @ jt-bullet-moulds.co.uk. He can set you up with exactly the mould you need. :hatsoff:

Well, my swivel gun's first outing went well. I had a demonstration event at beautiful Featherstone Castle, on the South Tyne river in Northumberland. Spectacular venue, blazing sunny day, enthusiastic crowd. I was just using 1 & 1/2 oz blank charges but they were LOUD, the sound crashing down the steep-side river valley and bouncing off the castle walls! I also did a demonstration of 'guns through history' with gonnes, matchlocks, flintlocks, percussion locks and cartridge guns. A very enjoyable day....

When loading a deck gun with a ball does one patch the ball or leave it loose like in larger cannon?

Well, technically, as a cannon it shouldn't really be patched and should just be wadded, so as to allow for windage. However, this is quite a small calibre one, somewhere between 3 and 4 bore, so a patch could well be safely used with ball.

Anyway, here's a video still from this weekend's fun at Featherstone Castle. Gives you some idea of the joy to be had in blasting one of these 'toys'....

Shooting it apparently turns people's hair blue. :shocked2: Glad I don't have any hair. :haha: :blah:

It isn't shooting. My Sevan has blue highlights and has never fired a single shot.

Do you mean to admit to everyone that you haven't been able to convert your Sevan to a shooter/hunter? - You should turn in your membership card to "ML Nation".
(CHUCKLE)

To answer your question, MOST small swivel guns in the USA were evidently used with a load of powder & shot to repel boarders/intruders/criminals from watercraft & private premises.
For example, Harriet Anne Moore-Potter, our very own "East Texas Wildcat", noted markswoman, dedicated huntress and "power behind the throne of the Caddo Republic" had a 2-3 pound cannon (period descriptions vary as to its bore size & the cannons length) IN her home and frequently used her little cannon (as well as other firearms, including her 12-gauge rifle) to defend the Potter's "homeland" on the shore of Caddo Lake.
(In at least one case, she & Robert "demounted" the cannon from its usual location and used it to defend their property from their large treehouse in the top of a large cypress tree. = Harriet's memoirs describes the treehouse as "the love-nest that my beloved Robert built for us high among the leafy boughs".
Several pages later, she says that she defended "our love-nest with my little gun, which I loaded with two hands full of shot, driving away several evil men".)
It must be said that "Our Harriet", while "a lady of quality and a great beauty", was to quote one author, "She were no pussy cat; she was a lioness, full growed."

In that period Texas was WILD and Northeast Texas, in the ante-bellum period, frequently suffered incursions by bandit gangs, renegades, criminal bands from across the Sabine and even some Comanche raids.
(Generally NE Texas was "far from the Comanche's usual raiding area". Nonetheless, period letters/journals mention raiding by "the Comanch".)

yours, satx

I must be doing something wrong: I've been shooting frontstuffers for 25 years and all it's done is turn my hair grey....!

Seriously, though, the look on people's faces when they have a go on these guns is the reason why I love doing demonstration events like this. Even down on the range, it's often the case that the other shooters around me get to play more with my interesting and unusual toys than I do. Here in the UK, shooting as a leisure activity is so much under attack from every section of society, that it's almost our obligation, as shooters, to project a positive image whenever and wherever we can.....