The Beast!

[robinghewitt]

Wall gun, c1790, Mewis of B'ham, 0.96" bore. You can load as much as you like but starts to get uncomfortable if you go much beyond 3-400 gns :grin:

It is possible to shoot it horizontally but only if someone else is holding it :shocked2:

Movie

Here's the latest cannon shooting video, 2 lbs of porridge oats over half a pound of black.

You Tube movie

 

[bkovire]

good show, jolly good i'd say, that looks like fun.

 

[BenCoogle]

I believe the service load at the time was 300 grs. The one The Rifle Shoppe copied was a Jordan 1744. DeWitt Bailey had all the metal parts and no wood. Lewis Leonard picked them up in London and brought them to America. DeWitt sent me the barrel dimensions and I make them out of cold drawn seamless tubing with 1" i.d.

I've done 2 in the French fashion but had to cobble up all the parts except the lock. The Castillo de San Marco has one of them and they demonstrate it regularly.

They are great fun to shoot! My personal one is a Dutch style with a wall hook rather than a swivel. Had to fabricate all the parts for that one, TRS copied that one too. I had trouble with the sear catching in the half cock notch, strong mainspring-forged it out of a VW leaf spring, and had to put in a fly, made it out of a 4d cut nail!

Cheers!
Ben

 

[robinghewitt]

i did see one like mine on the Antiques Roashow but it had been sawn off to about an 18" barrel. If they are rare I expect someone will 'fix it', they don't seem to come up for sale very often.

Robin

 

[BenCoogle]

Kit Ravenshear said that there are racks of them in Devonshire Castle and numbers in other Armouries. He said that they were an "Unplowed 10 acre field", very little written about them.

I would think though, that there wasn't much interest in them on the surplus market back then.
Little practical use anywhere except Armies! Punt guns have larger bores for the most part.

I have a Minie' Ball that fits my bore perfectly that was cast in an original Confederate mold.

Ben