Full scale cannon re-build

[davec2]

A while back (October of last year) I posted my adventures in making up a 2.75" reamer to correct a flaw in the bore of my lite six pounder full size cannon. If you missed the thread, here is a link Reamer Made to Correct a Cannon Bore

I noted the following in the preamble to that thread......

"I really need another project like I need another root canal......nonetheless, I have begun a refurbishment of the full size cannon I built 50 years ago when I was a junior in high school. Don't ask me why after 50 years I have to do this now, but there are some issues with the gun that have bothered me for 50 years and if I don't get to correcting them now....well.....I don't need to explain any of that to this crowd."

****************************************************************************************************************************************

So, many of you have seen these pictures before, but here is the cannon again for those who may not have seen it.......





This is the continuation of the story. First of all, at the end of the cannon bore reaming thread I had asked others about Teslong bore scopes. Because of the positive feedback I received, I purchased one and used it to do a much more thorough examination of the bore. Although the diameter of the bore had been corrected to a consistent 2.75", I didn't like some of the porosity I was seeing in the wall at various points. I had been shooting the gun for 50 years with heavy and light charges including charges up to 1.25 pounds of powder behind a 2.75 inch zinc ball....fairly stout for a non combat situation. In all of that, I never had reason to doubt the safety of the barrel. But this gun was cast in 1970 and, since then, almost all the barrels I have seen, iron or brass or bronze, have had steel liners with a welded breech installed. Since I was now intending to correct a lot of the cosmetic deficiencies on the cannon carriage, I decided that it would be best to line the barrel as well. So the reaming exercise had been a bit of wasted effort but I had learned a lot in the process.

Now re-boring and lining this barrel was far beyond the capability of the machines I own, or have available to me, and demands some specialized skills. So I called Mr. James Olsen at South Bend Replicas (where the barrel was originally cast under the tutelage of Mr. Paul Barnett at what was then "Barney's Cannons"). Jim agreed to rebore the gun to 3.25 inches and install a 1/4" thick DOM steel liner with a welded breech. So last week, I built a substantial crate and managed to wrestle the 600 pounds of barrel off the carriage and into the box. After sealing it up, a friend and I delivered it to a trucking company for shipment back to South Bend.

Although that all sounds fairly simple, picking the 600 pound gun barrel up safely off the carriage by myself was not an inconsequential task, so there is some back story..... In 1994, when the Northridge earthquake hit my area, my chimney had broken off at the withers, there was a fair amount of other structural damage inside the house, and the ridge pole in my garage had snapped in two partially collapsing the garage roof. In the process of fixing the garage ridge pole, I had jacked up the broken beam, slipped a second 2 x 12 under it, and then glued and screwed 3/4" plywood stiffeners on both sides of the double beams between the rafters to amalgamate them into a single 3" x 22" ridge beam. With that much beefing up, I figured that ridge pole could take an additional 600 pounds of load.....so I drilled a 2 inch hole through the beam near its top edge and in the center of the garage. With a chain rove through the hole, I hung a ratchet chain hoist on it and used that set up to lift the gun off the carriage.....











The barrel is now on its way to South Bend. While Jim is doing the lining work, I will continue with the re-build and corrections to the gun carriage itself which will involve a lot of iron and wood work and will keep you posted.

 

[frankie]

A while back (October of last year) I posted my adventures in making up a 2.75" reamer to correct a flaw in the bore of my lite six pounder full size cannon. If you missed the thread, here is a link Reamer Made to Correct a Cannon Bore

I noted the following in the preamble to that thread......

"I really need another project like I need another root canal......nonetheless, I have begun a refurbishment of the full size cannon I built 50 years ago when I was a junior in high school. Don't ask me why after 50 years I have to do this now, but there are some issues with the gun that have bothered me for 50 years and if I don't get to correcting them now....well.....I don't need to explain any of that to this crowd."

****************************************************************************************************************************************

So, many of you have seen these pictures before, but here is the cannon again for those who may not have seen it.......





This is the continuation of the story. First of all, at the end of the cannon bore reaming thread I had asked others about Teslong bore scopes. Because of the positive feedback I received, I purchased one and used it to do a much more thorough examination of the bore. Although the diameter of the bore had been corrected to a consistent 2.75", I didn't like some of the porosity I was seeing in the wall at various points. I had been shooting the gun for 50 years with heavy and light charges including charges up to 1.25 pounds of powder behind a 2.75 inch zinc ball....fairly stout for a non combat situation. In all of that, I never had reason to doubt the safety of the barrel. But this gun was cast in 1970 and, since then, almost all the barrels I have seen, iron or brass or bronze, have had steel liners with a welded breech installed. Since I was now intending to correct a lot of the cosmetic deficiencies on the cannon carriage, I decided that it would be best to line the barrel as well. So the reaming exercise had been a bit of wasted effort but I had learned a lot in the process.

Now re-boring and lining this barrel was far beyond the capability of the machines I own, or have available to me, and demands some specialized skills. So I called Mr. James Olsen at South Bend Replicas (where the barrel was originally cast under the tutelage of Mr. Paul Barnett at what was then "Barney's Cannons"). Jim agreed to rebore the gun to 3.25 inches and install a 1/4" thick DOM steel liner with a welded breech. So last week, I built a substantial crate and managed to wrestle the 600 pounds of barrel off the carriage and into the box. After sealing it up, a friend and I delivered it to a trucking company for shipment back to South Bend.

Although that all sounds fairly simple, picking the 600 pound gun barrel up safely off the carriage by myself was not an inconsequential task, so there is some back story..... In 1994, when the Northridge earthquake hit my area, my chimney had broken off at the withers, there was a fair amount of other structural damage inside the house, and the ridge pole in my garage had snapped in two partially collapsing the garage roof. In the process of fixing the garage ridge pole, I had jacked up the broken beam, slipped a second 2 x 12 under it, and then glued and screwed 3/4" plywood stiffeners on both sides of the double beams between the rafters to amalgamate them into a single 3" x 22" ridge beam. With that much beefing up, I figured that ridge pole could take an additional 600 pounds of load.....so I drilled a 2 inch hole through the beam near its top edge and in the center of the garage. With a chain rove through the hole, I hung a ratchet chain hoist on it and used that set up to lift the gun off the carriage.....











The barrel is now on its way to South Bend. While Jim is doing the lining work, I will continue with the re-build and corrections to the gun carriage itself which will involve a lot of iron and wood work and will keep you posted.

That is awesome

 

[Rich44]

The Cannon category has been kind of slow recently. This ongoing story of your rebuild with great pictures should help it out. Thanks

 

[mzzldr]

Looking forward to reading more about your adventure.

 

[davec2]

While waiting for the barrel to be lined, I am working on correcting problems with the gun carriage. When I built the carriage I found an old cast iron acme threaded jack in a junk yard. The 1 1/2" diameter threaded shank looked like a perfect elevating screw to me. So I cut away the female threaded section on the top of the jack and welded it into a plate to mount it on the trail of the gun carriage. I needed handles to turn the screw with so I drilled four 3/8" holes at the top pf the screw and silver brazed four pieces of steel rod into the holes for turning handles. Of course, that doesn't look very much like a real cannon elevating screw. To improve the look without a complete re-make, I machined four larger brass handles and drilled them out to slide over the 3/8" rods. The ends of the rods were then drilled and tapped for 10-32 brass screws to hold the brass handles in place. The mounting plate still needs some work, the hex headed mounting bolts need to be replaced with square headed ones, and the silicon bronze weld needs to be dressed, so there is a little more to go on this. The originals had a narrower cast brass mounting plate and female thread with only two mounting studs so....It's not perfect but I think it looks a lot better....Other part re-builds to follow.

 

[doubleset]

Very cool approach to getting the gun off the carriage. I've done similar things when fixing motorcycles in the garage -- or in a couple of cases of moving ~800 lb machines like a large band saw or old full-size milling machine. Always exciting.

I'm curious how you estimated what size cross members to use for hanging the hoist and how much weight the trusses would hold.

 

[Rich44]

Looks a lot better already with the new elevator screw brass handles. But I would have really jumped up and down if you had made the bell end of the new brass handles slightly longer. And then machined a matching vertical radius on that end so they fit tight to the elevating screw. Giving an appearance that they just grew out of the shaft. Anyway what you have is a nice improvement and hope you are not offended by the suggestion. You have a really nice and big cannon that shows a lot of work.

 

[davec2]

Doubleset ....my method of verifying that the roof ridge pole was strong enough was to get two more guys my size to get up on the garage roof with me and stand close together in the middle of the ridge. The roof didn't collapse or even flex, so I assumed I was ok to lift the gun. I guess I could have calculated beam loading and all.....but then I'm an empirical kind of engineer.....

Rock44....Not offended at all. Great idea !!! I might need to remake the handles like that and, since they are only held in place with screws, they would be easy to change out. Thanks !!

 

[Rich44]

Well, Thank you.

If you do, I would assume you have the brass handles to bottom out on steel arms now. The bottom would be changed to the radius contact and a slight gap at the screw end. The radius end would also need a clearance hole just deep enough for the weld. Even if not you are making some nice improvements and look forward to the great pictures you provide. I could only dream of owning this large of cannon.

 

[doubleset]

Doubleset ....my method of verifying that the roof ridge pole was strong enough was to get two more guys my size to get up on the garage roof with me and stand close together in the middle of the ridge. The roof didn't collapse or even flex, so I assumed I was ok to lift the gun. I guess I could have calculated beam loading and all.....but then I'm an empirical kind of engineer.....

Yeah, the load calculations are tedious -- which is why I've avoided them. I lack formal training in that particular area. I've just been chicken to go too empirical with it. The phrase "test to destruction" comes to mind.

 

[davec2]

Well, as part of my refurbishment of the cannon I built 50 years ago, I am replacing some of my high school era home made parts with more correct versions. I started off replacing the (home made*, hand bent*, sneezed together with an old stick welder) trail handles with some castings I acquired from Ken Creswell in Knoxville, TN. I had to drill new holes through the end of the trail for the 5/8" bolts that hold the handles on. But the trail is tapered on all four sides, so trying to get a hole to come out on the opposite side (without taking the whole gun apart and setting it up in a drill press) was a bit of a $#@* shoot. So taking a cue from Dave Rase and Mr. Boggs on their tools for putting lug holes through a rifle stock, I built a giant version with brass sleeves for various size drills. Here is the drill guide.......



And the guide set up for drilling the cannon trail.......



Trail handles installed.......



Later I tell the story of the new pointing rings on the end of the trail.....another story of replacing parts either left off originally or parts that were compromises way back when.

* When I started making all of the "irons" required to build a full size cannon, it became immediately apparent that I was going to have to make some compromises on the authenticity of what I was building. All of the original irons were either cast or forged and were well beyond my capability to manufacture as a high school kid in the garage in 1970. With no equipment except access to a cutting torch, a Wildcat grinder, hand drills, hack saws, a really old Lincoln stick welder, and a sledge hammer, I started making all the iron parts for the carriage as close to being historically accurate as I could. I didn't even have access to an anvil, but there was a manhole cover in the street in front of my childhood home. If an iron part needed to be pounded into shape, I would heat it in a mud forge I built in an old wheel barrel (to make it portable). With the forge set up it up in the front yard, and watching for traffic, I would take the hot iron out to the street and, using the manhole cover as an anvil, would pound the daylights out of it until it needed to go back into the fire for a reheat.....or until a car came along and forced me to stop for traffic.

 

[davec2]

I neglected to show the difference between the 50 year old "not so good looking" trail handles and the more historically accurate versions that I have installed now. Here is a photo showing one of the trail handles I made in 1970 and one of the ones I recently received from Ken and installed.....



On the subject of pointing rings.....In 1970 I had no way of making the two tapered steel rings that are mounted to the "lunette"/ trail plate assembly and were used to anchor a 5 foot long hickory handspike that is used to move the trail more easily in train. The smaller one of those rings is fixed and the larger one is pivoted, which was part of the complexity of making these originally. The "lunette" is the heavy steel shoe that follows the curved end of the wooden trail and the top of the trail, where the pointing rings are mounted, is called the trail plate. So the abbreviated version that I built in 1970 looked just like this....a 3/8" thick steel steel shoe (lunette) under the trail end and a 3/8" thick steel trail plate. No pointing rings. And the bolts holding the trail between the lunette and the plate were welded to the inside curve of the lunette. It looked like this.....



This is what a real lunette and trail plate should look like. I couldn't just buy the set because my trail is not exactly the right shape and size, so I had to begin by modifying what I had. So I cut away the original welded bolts and started to plan out how to use the purchased pointing rings and rework the existing "lunette" to accept the rings and new bolt spacing. You can see here that I had to weld the original bolt holes in the trail plate closed.......













After heavy modification (i.e. a lot of welding and piecing of steel parts together) the set up is starting to look a lot more like it is supposed to. Here are the pointing rings with the hand spike installed.







You may also be able to tell from the above pictures that my original lunette just ended with a flat piece of 3/8" steel plate with a large hole cut in it. A real lunette has a very heavy ring. So I sawed off the end of the original lunette and started welding in place the ring cut from a huge 6 inch diameter eye bolt......







I still need to add a lot of steel to the underside of the lunette to get the taper that the originals had.....more cutting, welding, and grinding.....but no engraving

 

[Rich44]

Above and beyond!! Really nice!!

 

[Dude]

The devil's in the details, isn't it?

Kind of funny how it's possible to spend days on one little detail getting it absolutely right, and in the end no one will have a clue what it took.

 

[frankie]

I have to ask. How far away can you hit a object the size of a small Trailor?

 

[davec2]

Dude,
You are exactly correct.....the devil IS in the details and trying to get one part right demands that the next part over also be corrected....and then the next....and the next. Your understanding of this situation sounds like you have done this sort of thing before....

Frankie,
This is a smooth bore gun but, with a tight fitting ball (i.e. not more than about 0.006" windage) I could fairly consistently hit an old car 750 yards out down range.

 

[Dude]

Damn! That's pretty accurate! I'm impressed.

Yep, I know all about getting things right and the inordinate amount of time required making that happen. I used to be more of a perfectionist, but that's only relaxed a little, these days, to be a bit more realistic. So, yes, I've run into that my whole life. I get a new (used) gun and next thing you know, I'm fixing everything, including original manufacturing sloppiness or booboos. I've got a motorcycle project I'm working on, a make-over of a homely Moto Guzzi to one of the sexiest. As an example: I made some repro side covers a year ago, but couldn't mount them. I had the stock mounts for those covers, but my bike had welded brackets in the area with electrical and brake equipment taking up the space. It was complex enough I totally stalled on that point. A major re-arrange was needed to make it happen. Finally last week I dove in and just did it. I'm guessing it took me a good four days to relocate the ignition coils and make/modify brackets to mount those silly things.

A guy saw my bike (I'm riding the Guzzi year-round, so it's kind of dirty) in the parking lot at the gun show Sunday and started up a conversation. He thought it looked like a recent barn find. LOL He hadn't a clue how many hours had been spent removing the handlebar mounts since I'm running clip-ons, and polishing the triple trees, modifying the rear part of the frame, replacing plastic fenders with metal, replace cast wheels with wire spokes, mounting a round headlight, mounting earlier style gauges, and all the other mods. It's still got some corroded fasteners, the paint is old, there are some oil seeps, and I'm still working towards square one. Once I've gotten the basic mockup, I'll work on the aesthetics. So I think it's pretty cool that he hadn't a clue the bike hadn't always looked like that. It's a good validation.

 

[Artificer]

A while back (October of last year) I posted my adventures in making up a 2.75" reamer to correct a flaw in the bore of my lite six pounder full size cannon. If you missed the thread, here is a link Reamer Made to Correct a Cannon Bore

I noted the following in the preamble to that thread......

"I really need another project like I need another root canal......nonetheless, I have begun a refurbishment of the full size cannon I built 50 years ago when I was a junior in high school. Don't ask me why after 50 years I have to do this now, but there are some issues with the gun that have bothered me for 50 years and if I don't get to correcting them now....well.....I don't need to explain any of that to this crowd."

****************************************************************************************************************************************

So, many of you have seen these pictures before, but here is the cannon again for those who may not have seen it.......





This is the continuation of the story. First of all, at the end of the cannon bore reaming thread I had asked others about Teslong bore scopes. Because of the positive feedback I received, I purchased one and used it to do a much more thorough examination of the bore. Although the diameter of the bore had been corrected to a consistent 2.75", I didn't like some of the porosity I was seeing in the wall at various points. I had been shooting the gun for 50 years with heavy and light charges including charges up to 1.25 pounds of powder behind a 2.75 inch zinc ball....fairly stout for a non combat situation. In all of that, I never had reason to doubt the safety of the barrel. But this gun was cast in 1970 and, since then, almost all the barrels I have seen, iron or brass or bronze, have had steel liners with a welded breech installed. Since I was now intending to correct a lot of the cosmetic deficiencies on the cannon carriage, I decided that it would be best to line the barrel as well. So the reaming exercise had been a bit of wasted effort but I had learned a lot in the process.

Now re-boring and lining this barrel was far beyond the capability of the machines I own, or have available to me, and demands some specialized skills. So I called Mr. James Olsen at South Bend Replicas (where the barrel was originally cast under the tutelage of Mr. Paul Barnett at what was then "Barney's Cannons"). Jim agreed to rebore the gun to 3.25 inches and install a 1/4" thick DOM steel liner with a welded breech. So last week, I built a substantial crate and managed to wrestle the 600 pounds of barrel off the carriage and into the box. After sealing it up, a friend and I delivered it to a trucking company for shipment back to South Bend.

Although that all sounds fairly simple, picking the 600 pound gun barrel up safely off the carriage by myself was not an inconsequential task, so there is some back story..... In 1994, when the Northridge earthquake hit my area, my chimney had broken off at the withers, there was a fair amount of other structural damage inside the house, and the ridge pole in my garage had snapped in two partially collapsing the garage roof. In the process of fixing the garage ridge pole, I had jacked up the broken beam, slipped a second 2 x 12 under it, and then glued and screwed 3/4" plywood stiffeners on both sides of the double beams between the rafters to amalgamate them into a single 3" x 22" ridge beam. With that much beefing up, I figured that ridge pole could take an additional 600 pounds of load.....so I drilled a 2 inch hole through the beam near its top edge and in the center of the garage. With a chain rove through the hole, I hung a ratchet chain hoist on it and used that set up to lift the gun off the carriage.....











The barrel is now on its way to South Bend. While Jim is doing the lining work, I will continue with the re-build and corrections to the gun carriage itself which will involve a lot of iron and wood work and will keep you posted.

Hi Dave,

Gosh, I will never forget the Northridge Earthquake. We lived about 11 miles northeast of Temecula at the time and I got the kids and wife out of the house, as I feared it would shake the house down on our heads. I could not believe the miles long huge ridge mounds (I don't remember the actual term) that it threw up for miles near 29 Palms.

Not sure how far away you are from Sacramento and I imagine it would be a ways for you, but in case you didn't know, they have an original Civil War 6 pounder and carriage on display at the Museum of the Citizen Soldier there. I bumped into that museum by accident when we dropped off some gear for the then Air Force lab to inspect for us. We had to wait for them to fix/repair the gear, so we "saw some sights."

You could get up real close as they just had it roped off rather close. I spotted it was marked for I think it was the 17th Virginia. We were there during the week and in the morning. I asked some questions about the Naval Infantry Displays they had, as the uniforms were taken directly from the USMC. The Lady at the desk pointed me to the Curator's Office. I politely knocked and asked if he might answer some questions and he was glad to give some more info. Finally I said I wanted to thank them for taking such good care of the 6 pounder for us and I would be glad as a Military Representative of Virginia to take it off their hands and return it home...............

I said that with a deadpan face. The Curator's jaw dropped and his eyes bugged out a little, then he busted out laughing after I grinned a bit.

BTW, may I ask where you got the really nice wheels for the gun carriage?

Gus

 

[davec2]

Artificer,

Originally I considered building a sea carriage for the gun as the solid wooden wheels were within my capability to make. However, I became enamored with the idea of a land carriage and thought I would take a crack at that version. The required wheels for a land carriage were the biggest problem. Living in Southern California, where a considerable number of western movies were made, one would think that wagon wheels would not be much of a problem to acquire. However, to find genuine wooden wheels that were in good shape and the right size turned out to be a huge issue. After traveling all over the San Fernando Valley, and looking at countless wheels that had been used as yard ornaments (and were therefore weather beaten to the point of uselessness) my Mother, by dint of tireless effort on the phone, finally located a huge antique warehouse (Dal’s Antiques) in Lawndale, CA. Having traveled down to Dal’s, I was initially disappointed when I asked about acquiring a pair of large, wooden wheels. The fellow I was speaking to said he didn’t have any wheels that size. But then he remembered that a full size, 19th century Gypsy wagon had just arrived from Europe. We went out back to look at it and it had four absolutely beautiful wheels that would have been just perfect for the cannon. But my initial excitement faded as I realized that I couldn’t use a whole Gipsy wagon and the antique guy couldn’t use a Gypsy wagon with only two of four wheels. As we both discussed the dilemma, he absent mindedly opened the door on the back of the wagon ….and there inside the wagon were two perfect condition spare wheels !! And both were equipped with the cast iron skeins that were needed for both ends of the axel !! So for $150, I became the proud owner of two oak wooden wheels that, although over 150 years old, were sound as a dollar and perfect for the cannon.

 

[andy52]

This is not meant to be a thread highjack, but I looking to buy and build a cannon and would like your opinion on the Hern.
U.S. CARRONADE – FULL SCALE