• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Whitworth 12 Pounder

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Apr 12, 2004
Messages
6,297
Reaction score
4,985
Location
Winchester, VA
I had it in mind to post this but never got around to it. The passing of its builder/owner Kenny White a few days ago, a skirmisher with the N-SSA for over 50 years and friend inspired me to share these photos in his memory. The piece is a full scale Whitworth 12 Pounder that he assembled on a carriage he had built by the Amish. Kenny had a 13' brass cylinder bored round its entire length then he took it to his shop where he had built a rifling machine using a hydraulic cylinder attached to a column. 7,300 passes later he had the hex bore seen in the photos. A lot of complex machining went into making the breech assembly including a double lead screw thread to close it. Ignition is with a friction primer in the center of the breech making this gun an in-line breech loader which, in this case, I hope will be allowed to stay here. The projectile is a machined aluminum bolt ($50 each) which is a duplicate of the original 12 pound iron bolt. The charge is 5 ounces as opposed to 1.75 pounds in the original. The gun is capable of duplicating the performance of the original which had a range of 5.7 miles.

I was fortunate to have served in the crew on this piece in an artillery skirmish 2 years ago. No, I'm not in any of the photos but I did get to load and to pull the lanyard several times. Quite enjoyable and the first time I had gotten to fire a cannon since I was in the Maryland Forces about 35 years ago. That's Kenny in the red shirt and straw hat.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0172.jpg
    IMG_0172.jpg
    37.7 KB · Views: 176
  • EDIT 174  Copy.JPG
    EDIT 174 Copy.JPG
    142.9 KB · Views: 191
  • EDIT 175  Copy.jpg
    EDIT 175 Copy.jpg
    160.6 KB · Views: 172
  • EDIT 179  Copy.JPG
    EDIT 179 Copy.JPG
    291.2 KB · Views: 172
yes-R-I-P. a truly great man, the type that only comes around once in a life time!!
 
Back
Top