Period Correct Machining

[4sd4d]

A question here.

I have looked online and found no difinitive answers.

I remember seeing a sketch from about the late 1700s of some people machining a cannon barrel.

Does anyone have information on machinery and cutting tools used when making these old guns.

Being a machinist myself, I am fairly interested in this kind of info.

 

A question here.

I have looked online and found no difinitive answers.

I remember seeing a sketch from about the late 1700s of some people machining a cannon barrel.

Does anyone have information on machinery and cutting tools used when making these old guns.

Being a machinist myself, I am fairly interested in this kind of info.

The frame work for early lathes were generally made from oak. Files were more generally used than cutting tools on metals. At least that has been my experience. But then again, I'm working 14th-15th century.

The lathe can been documented back to the days of the Pharohs.

Most early iron/steel cannon barrels were either cast using wooden forms to make molds in the sand. They would be decorated using carved plates to imprint the sand after the main impression was made. The bore was often made using a void, and honed to round and smooth.

Earlier on though, barrels were hammer forged using cooperage technology.

The period you are seeking info on, they are just beginning to mass produce iron and steel, so frames would be constructed of either cast or wrought iron using what would be recognized as rudimentary cutting tools. The industrial age had yet to arrive.

I use spring pole lathe technology when fitting tillers to gonnes.

CP

 

[benvenuto]

try my website:
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~dispater/cannons.htm

Theres also a bit on the history of the lathe. What you have to realise is that up till the 1700's, Cannon were not bored from solid - they were cast with the bore in place and the bore was merely reamed out to the right size.
All the information you'll ever need is in the book:
Jackson and de Beer, "Eighteenth Century Gunfounding", David and Charles, 1973

 

[4sd4d]

Thanks for the replies.

I will check the website and the book.

It would be a bear to hone the casting out without being able to bore it first.

 

[robinghewitt]

up till the 1700's, Cannon were not bored from solid - they were cast with the bore in place and the bore was merely reamed out to the right size.

What do they call those little iron pins cast into a bronze barrel, the ones that supported the bore mould while it was poured.

I used to know but I've forgotten

 

[benvenuto]

I was thinking TRIVET...but I just checked and its CHAPLET :winking:

 

[benvenuto]

The difficulty was in getting past the "skin" of the casting, but after that it was comparatively trouble free, and pressumably easier than drilling from solid. Cannon were being cast with the bore in place up until 1800 or so. Moritz made the first major experiments in the 1730's, and then the Verbruggens father and son started at the Hague and then later at Greenwich up till the end of the American war. :hatsoff:

 

[GunneyG]

See this page from the South Bend Replicas website.