Full Scale Cannon Re-build - Project Completed

[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    https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=68075.0

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 the ALR crowd 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.

Again to the Moderators, if this doesn't belong in the "Gun Building" section, please move it to wherever you think best.

[BrianS]

I remember that cannon from a football game. At least I think it was a football game. Long time ago but it was very inspirational to me!  Looks like a fun project.

[davec2]

Brian.....Yes....when I built this cannon I took it to my high school football games.  The intent was to fire a blank charge every time we got a touchdown....but our team wasn't all that good, so I started to fire the gun anytime anybody got a touchdown !....or at the end of each quarter.....   That was in 1970 and 1971 in Southern California when a high school kid could drive up with a trailer towing a full size cannon and 50 pounds of black powder and everybody cheered.  These days the bomb squad, SWAT team, and the Feds would show up and surround the place.  Times have changed....

Did you go to high school here in So Cal ?

[Daryl]

That is a GREAT looking cannon, Dave.

Cannons are now prohibited weapons in Canukistan.

[LynnC]

Sad to hear of that Daryl. What became of the one you and your brother mentioned shooting at the rendezvous?

[BrianS]

Brian.....Yes....when I built this cannon I took it to my high school football games.  The intent was to fire a blank charge every time we got a touchdown....but our team wasn't all that good, so I started to fire the gun anytime anybody got a touchdown !....or at the end of each quarter.....   That was in 1970 and 1971 in Southern California when a high school kid could drive up with a trailer towing a full size cannon and 50 pounds of black powder and everybody cheered.  These days the bomb squad, SWAT team, and the Feds would show up and surround the place.  Times have changed....

Did you go to high school here in So Cal ?

Fellow Eagle... Class of 74.

[hanshi]

That's a very fine looking cannon, I like it.  Man, but you put a lot of time and effort on it!

[Chocktaw Brave]

I love it!
I’m sure that would be very expensive to reproduce today. But I’d still like to have one!

[Craig Wilcox]

Dave, looking at that beautiful gun carriage, I just have to ask - do you have a pair of Belgians or Clydesdales to tow it around?  I am sure some of the Amish farmers here in Ohio would be happy to sell you a pair, and the harness to go with them.

Now, THAT would be stylish!

[Daryl]

Sad to hear of that Daryl. What became of the one you and your brother mentioned shooting at the rendezvous?

Taylor traded his 3" cannon for a violin decades ago. Lately we were shooting a 'replica' of a field piece, with a smallish 1 1/2" bore
belonging to a local chap. We won the shoot a couple years in a row until the main club we were shooting at, stopped the practice.
This is that 1 1/2" bored gun.
IIRC, we managed about a 10" group at 100 meters using lead balls patched in heavy denim (of course).
The sights are removed after alignment.
That's Taylor & our own Hatchet Jack, the owner of the cannon.

[davec2]

[Daryl]

Dave- have you ever shot grape?  At a rendezvous at Sooke, Vancouver Island, B.C. back in the mid 70's, there was a 3" cannon at the "shoot". The owners
went around and collected round balls from anyone who would make a donation along with minnie balls & powder.  Well they loaded it up with powder???- and
likely 8 pounds of 'shot'.  At 100yards distance stood the club's target stands, 6' x 30" wide, shoulder to shoulder having cardboard of plywood backing. I don't
 remember which. At the "shot", every one of those racks were hit, waving back and forth at the impacts of MANY projectiles for a width of about 30'. It was an
eyeopener for us, thinking back to the various wars where such projectiles were possibly used.  That would be devastating to advancing troops in formation.

[LynnC]

Glad he traded it Daryl

[Marcruger]

"I just have to ask - do you have a pair of Belgians or Clydesdales to tow it around?"

Don't discount a nice Ardennes or Shire.   :-D   

[davec2]

Daryl,

When I was younger (and knew everything) I fired cans full of old ball bearings (armor piercing as it turned out).  Yes.....unbelievably lethal.  Then I made chain shot....3 feet of chain with a cannon ball on each end and with a pound and a half of powder behind them.  I only did this once and the recoil nearly got me.   I also fired one round of bar shot....two half cannon balls with a doubled sliding bar between them.  Not as bad as the chain shot, but still uncomfortably heavy recoil and a lot of expense and trouble to make the projectiles.

I'm a bit smarter now that I don't know everything.....

[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.

[davec2]

I posted the following previously (back in October of last year) but it really belongs here now in this whole re-build thread....so pardon the repeat.......

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.

[Craig Wilcox]

Great looking installation, Dave - but one thought:  Put the bolts in from the top, as with an airplane.  If the nut ever loosens, the bolt will stay in place - unless you start doing outside loops!

[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   

[Daryl]

Daryl,

When I was younger (and knew everything) I fired cans full of old ball bearings (armor piercing as it turned out).  Yes.....unbelievably lethal.  Then I made chain shot....3 feet of chain with a cannon ball on each end and with a pound and a half of powder behind them.  I only did this once and the recoil nearly got me.   I also fired one round of bar shot....two half cannon balls with a doubled sliding bar between them.  Not as bad as the chain shot, but still uncomfortably heavy recoil and a lot of expense and trouble to make the projectiles.

I'm a bit smarter now that I don't know everything.....

Cans of ball bearings = canned grape so very similar to paper ctgs. for shot.  Same result, keeping the shot cloud together a bit longer.
The chained and bar shot, we never tried. VERY interesting. Tks Dave.

[Bob Roller]

In days now long gone here in Huntington WVa there were (and are) two bronze or brass cannons that had a bore big enough to accomodate a PartiPac bottle full of blasting powder.There were 4 young guys seen earlier looking at on of the guns and later that night one o them went
off with a thundering boom and the barrel came off the concrete emplacement and the 8th Street intersection was full of smoke.While the police were trying to figure it out,an old style roadster cruised thru the intersection with 4 guys in it and on up to Crestmont drive.
This was in 1952 and the car is now J424,a Duesenberg roadster and if that number are entered into your computer,that car can be seen.
The cannons are still in place on 8th street. but the bores are full of concrete and only one of the participants is still alive. .
Bob Roller

[Robby]

Around here, just about every small town with a central square, commons, or park, has a memorial with cannons. Some are pretty spectacular and rare, in our town we have four Parrott's, one of them is serialized #2, I think #1 is somewhere in PA.
Robby

[Daryl]

Some, in Quebec.

[Daryl]

More - Halifax, N.S. I think. Same with the ones above.

[davec2]

Someone asked me the other day where I came by the wheels for this cannon.......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.