barrel sleeving

[andrellj]

I bought a cannon a while back and now I want to re-enforce it. I'd like to sleeve the barrel but don't know where to get this done. When I bought it I knew nothing about cannon safety, now I've learned that a safe barrel's walls are as thick as it's caliber. My tube is 4 inches at the breech with a 1.75 inch bore, that leaves the walls 1.125 inches thick, no good! I dont mind reducing the barrel to say .75 inches or something if I'll live longer. Where could I get this done?

 

[JIMinPHX]

I’ve never sleeved a cannon before, but I have sleeved a lot of other things. You’ll need to find a local machine shop with some big turning equipment like a Bullard or something. Start by looking in the Business to Business yellow pages under “machine shops” & under “Turning”. The hardest part of that job is going to be figuring out a way of getting a firm hold on the piece so that you can turn a clean bore to shrink fit the sleeve inside of. There may be some fixtureing expense involved. The fit between the bore & the sleeve needs to be real good for it to be a quality job. Rule of thumb is a thousandth of interference on the fit per inch of diameter. After you have a good clean bore & a properly sized sleeve, you then either need a massive press or enough heat to make the entire cannon expand several thousandths or a way of cooling the sleeve several hundred degrees in order to get the parts together. For the strongest job possible, you will want to use a closed end sleeve & not just a tube that is open on both ends. This will eliminate the possibility of blowing the sleeve out of the barrel if the press fit is not just so. The whole job requires both brawn & finesse. It’s a lot of precision work to do it properly. It’s hard to hold a precision diameter over a long length. That job is probably not going to be cheap.

:hmm:
Another option might be to just leave the cannon as-is & use a smaller powder charge. I think that’s what I’d do.

If you do decide to go looking for a machine shop, I think that I remember seeing one that looked like it might be able to handle that job out near Arnprior Ontario. I don’t remember the name of it though. Sorry about that.

 

[WRussell]

If you have a closed-end tube, you could fill it with liquid nitrogen.

What's wrong with epoxy to hold the sleeve? I thought that was SOP.

 

[andrellj]

Thanks for the replies. I've done just that up to now, fired reduced charges. The graph in " the more complete cannoneer" shows what the max charges are in small bores like mine only I use the barrel wall thickness as the caliber to be charged instead of the actual bore. Looks like I'm screwed on this one. Well, all the more reason to bye a new tube!

 

If you have a closed-end tube, you could fill it with liquid nitrogen.

What's wrong with epoxy to hold the sleeve? I thought that was SOP.

Only in .22's, with heavy cannon charges, epoxy would crystalize and the sleeve could rotate in the barrel cutting off the vent.

You could try Southbend, they do sleeving.

 

[John Taylor]

You didn't say what your barrel is made of. The bore size wall thickness applys to cast barrels. A steel barrel of your size has plenty of strength. If you feel you must reline then find some shelby tube or DOM tube. Both are a seemless tube of mild steel. My book shows DOM tube with an OD of 1.750" and 5 bore sizes running from 1.5" down to .750". Screw or weld a breach plug to the tube You can hold it in with epoxy or loctite. If you are worried about it moving then drill and tap a few holes near the muzzel part way into the liner and screw bolts into it then grind the excess off. You could also put a bolt through the fuse hole after boring it out and drill through the bolt for a new fuse hole ( loctite bolts). Use a stainless bolt and never worry about inlarging the fuse hole from burnout. I use loctite to hold barrel liners in cartridge rifles up to .50 cal and never had one come loose.

 

[andrellj]

It's made of 12ld14. A very mild steel from what I'm told. The manufacturer says it could withstand up to 80,000psi wich sounds like a lot, but not enough according to " the more complete cannoneer" It's also not a good steel for welding.
Too much lead. My plan was to make the liner about a 1/2 inch shorter than the outer tube and
thread the outer tube so that a screw in ring would hold the liner in place. Then increase the fuse hole for a bolt exactly the way it's described above. That would stop the liner from turning inside the tube. But this whole idea's worth more than the tube originally cost, I bet!

 

[John Taylor]

The metal that your barrel is made of is the same type that is used for ML rifle barrels because it is free machining. Like you said, it don't weld because of the lead that is used. A friend of mine made a 300 Win. Mag. from 12L14 and never had any problems with it. I'm sure the rifling didn't hold up as well as 4140. The size of your tube would be safe with a pound of 1F which would make a very loud boom. I know this because I had a 2" bore with 4" OD cannon that was shot reguler with that much powder. The recoil distroyed the wheels and carrage and the shock wave shattered a truck windshield. When I owned it there never was more than 1500 grains of powder but when I sold it to another gunsmith that liked to make more noise...
You might find a 1 pound fishing weight mold that should cast a ball to fit the bore you have. Depending on the length of your barrel it should be able to put the ball through 24" of wood with around 800 grains of 1F.

 

[andrellj]

A pound of 1f!! :shocked2: :rotf: I've only fired blanks with 800gr. of ff and newspaper wading at a hill side. That was loud enough I think. Good to know the tube can take more though. That was my proof load, after that shot I always charged it with 600gr. max. I think I'll make some more fuse and try up-ing the load. But when I'm showing off to friends I like firing it with a linstock, so I'll keep the charges low for that. I've already got all my ram rod accessories now all I kneed is a mold for shot and some wheels.

 

[donk]

My 1 inch gun has shot as much as 1200 gr of ffg but at 700 gr it will shoot fairly acuratlly up to about 1000 yards. I'm not sure why you would want any more charge than that.

 

[John Taylor]

The man that bought mine lived about a mile from me and when he shot it the windows in my house would rattle. A neighbor that lived a little closer said his ceiling fan would swing. Good thing we didn't live close to town.

 

Hey John! John's good people, he's done work for me in the past. He made my Swiss Candle Stick.

The size of your tube would be safe with a pound of 1F which would make a very loud boom. I know this because I had a 2" bore with 4" OD cannon that was shot reguler with that much powder. The recoil distroyed the wheels and carrage and the shock wave shattered a truck windshield. When I owned it there never was more than 1500 grains of powder but when I sold it to another gunsmith that liked to make more noise...

Here in Massachusetts, we are limited to 4 ounces of powder per inch of bore diameter. We are also required inspect our tubes by means of either x-ray or magnaflux.

 

When I was touching off the Beast, a cannon size, one pounder handgonne built by Handgonne Designs at the Vermont Renaisannce Festival, we were using 480 grains of 4fg. This was rattling the windows of a neighbor about a quarter mile away. Set off the car alarms in the parking lot that was a quarter block away.

 

[John Taylor]

Hey Claypipe, haven't talked to you in a while. We moved to the other side of the state to be closer to the grandkids and I'm in the middle of putting up a new shop. Got 5 more machine to move into the shop and I will be up and running again.I have a magnaflux but never used it on a canon. Works great on cast iron.

 

[JIMinPHX]

A friend of mine made a 300 Win. Mag. from 12L14 and never had any problems with it.

I am familiar with .22 rimfire barrels being made out of lead-loy, but I have never before heard of anyone even considering making a barrel for a high pressure cartridge out of low alloy steels of any description. It is true that lead-loy has a pretty good tensile rating, but it is quite soft & malleable. It is not at all suitable for rifling in a barrel that will see high-velocity, gilding-metal jacketed slugs. I am not even sure that a chamber made of that material would not deform badly from the first firing. A .300 Win-Mag is way outside the box for that material. Are you sure that your friend used lead-loy for a Win-Mag? It sounds like an awfully strange choice for a 54,000 CUP application.

 

[John Taylor]

The friend was the owner of Orion Rifle Barrel Co. He made a lot of muzzle loading barrels. He also was part owner of Montana rifle barrel Co. Most of his machines went to another friend that bores barrel blanks for me. I think the idea of using 12L14 was to see how it would hold up, this was probably just a test. He told me it shot good. As for how long it lasted I don't know and there is no way to get in touch with him to find out, he is not in the business of making barrels any more. Someone said agent orange got to him.

 

[John Taylor]

Cannonball, many years ago I had a 1" bore cannon and we were shooting 1,000 grains for a blank. A "discussion" got started about how much dammage a piece of paper would do. So I put a piece of 1/2" plywood againts and old redwood lawn chair about 10' from the muzzle and let go with a blank charge. The plywood had a hole about 8" across and the chair was no more.

 

[andrellj]

Yes sir, always have a backstop and a clear line of fire atleast a mile behind! I knocked over a pallet we stood up with a log about as thick as a telephone pole. the wad was 1 1/2 pages of newspaper. I only shoot in two spots. The lake by my buddy's cottage, there's a mountain on the far side of the lake and no road going around. Or the sand pit where I go shooting regularly. Again there's a mountain behind the hill we set the targets on and again there's no road/trail in behind us and we're actually on a small peninsula, surrounded by water.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Gentlemen: I think that one pound load is way too much for a 1" bore cannon. I helped build a British Light Six Pound Field Piece, with a South Bend Replica, lined, barrel, that had a 3.25+ bore diameter, and we used one pound of powder in it for a few charges, based on the original British manual of arms. We found we could save the powder by reducing the powder charge to one quarter pound of powder and 3/4 pound of Flour! Put it in a cartidge constructed of aluminum foil, for safety, ran it down the barrel, pierced the foil with a brass pick down the touch hole, and either used cannon fuse, or flash powder to light her off. We fired beer cans filled with cement out of it, and even found an original 6 pound ball to fire. We retrieved it from the earth backstop, and it was undamaged! I would think that the suggested 800 grains of powder behind a round ball in a one inch gun would be more than enough! Check with South Bend, and Dixie about books on cannon loads. We put in almost as much effort finding loading data, as we did building the carriage, and mounting the barrel. They do make impressive toys.