- Joined
- Jul 26, 2011
- Messages
- 4,142
This cannon is pretty large: The barrel is 5" in diameter at the breech,and the barrel is nearly 3 feet long. It was machined out of a bar of Naval Bronze,which is tough as can be to machine.
These are the 2 images I have of it. It takes 2 men to lift. The carriage is mahogany stained dark. It is a copy of the "Long Toms" on the USS Constitution. The Mariner's Museum in Newport News used to sell drawings of this cannon,or they might have been sold by the USS constitution museum in Boston. I have forgotten where.
The barrel is bored out all the way,and the cannon can be fired,though as of this date,it has not been.
The barrel was laboriously bored on a 40" Grizzly 16" lathe. I used a 1 3/8" drill with a long shaft mounted on it. First,I took a light grind down the length of the drill with a tool post grinder to ensure its perfect alignment to the welded on shaft as it rotated in the lathe. And,a lot of large drills have a bit of bend to them,resulting in a scored hole. After I ground the drill's outer edges,it bored an amazingly smooth hole that looked as if it had been reamed.
Drilling the LONG hole was a LONG job! I had to make a special "chuck" to fit over the still cylindrical,and unfinished cascabel knob. This cascabel knob was held in the tailstock by the chuck,secured with a set screw. Later,the cascabel knob could be finally machined to its shape.
The cannon barrel's muzzle was fitted to a carefully made block of oak which fit over the V ways of the lathe. The top of this 4" thick oak block had a hemispherical cavity bandsawed into its top surface for the muzzle of the barrel to EXACTLY REST IN perfectly aligned with the centerline of the lathe. Any error would have been magnified as the drill got deeper and deeper into the cannon. In the end,the gun was well and truly bored out.
I rested the cannon,muzzle towards the chuck and fed it towards the chuck with the tailstock spindle. I found that once the drill was inside the bore,I could only drill about 1/8" before it was necessary to extract the drill to clear the chips. Needless to say,this took DAYS. The drill also had to be stuck farther out of the chuck as the drilling got deeper,and had to be gotten loose and pulled out every 1/8". This got more difficult the deeper I went. I think it took 4 day's work to drill this hole with the too short lathe!
The most tricky part of the job was installing the trunnions. In the 18th. C.,trunnions were made well BELOW the centerline of the cannon barrel. By the Civil War,they were on the centerline. This made things more difficult to do. I previously had made accurate drawings of the cannon's diameter where the trunnions were located. I drilled and tapped the raw 5" diameter length of bronze on the vertical mill,counterbored it so that the threads would JUST STOP before the point of being seen(Hope this makes sense!). And threaded clear through the bronze before moving it at all. I can't recall how I did this!!
The trunnions,when fitted,had to thread in with an INTERFERENCE FIT tight thread,and butt tightly together inside the bore. I made a special wrench to grasp the trunnions without damaging them. The wrench had just a round jaw that could be squeezed via a good size socket head cap screw. The round jaws were lined with a few layers of paper dusted liberally with rosin. It worked very well,the rosin gripping as firmly as any hex nut. I have done this other times to extract gun barrels without damaging the pristine bluing on them.
After the barrel had been finish turned on the outside and polished,the trunnions were inserted. A THIN touch of Prussian blue was applied to both where the unthreaded portion of the trunnions would meet the bottoms of their counterbores,AND where they would butt together. Then,the trunnions were tightly screwed in,recut,and re screwed until the blue transfered to both the bottoms of the counterbores and to the center of the gun where they met. Again,I HOPE this makes sense!!
With the trunnions in place,the outside contours of the gun turned and polished,the barrel was bored. In the end,this worked perfectly. The trunnions threads were just inside the barrel,and could not be seen from the outside.
I will now confess,I proceeded to make a steel barrel,and another bronze barrel BLANK,with just the trunnions installed at this point. MANY years later,these blanks would be gotten out,and finished barrels made from them,for Jon and myself. I now CANNOT lift my barrel to get it back into my own 16 x 40" Grizzly lathe,to polish the breech end,or to fit it into an OAK carriage. I need to get a strong helper!
While I made the barrel,my journeyman Jon made the carriage. The cannon barrel was taken to the engraver's shop for a dedication to be beautifully engraved on top of the barrel.
The boss loved it. A few of the women in the audience were said to say "What for"? Well,it's a BOY TOY!!!!!
If I ever get my cannon done,I will engrave around the muzzle,inside the concentric rings provided for it: "The last Reasoning of Free Men." One of the French Kings had "The last Reasoning of Kings" engraved on all of his cannon. Cannon is the plural of cannon,like aircraft is the plural,and deer is the plural. I hate to see professional writers get those things wrong! Jon and I have 5 gallon buckets of forged 1 3/8" BALL BEARINGS to use for cannon balls!! I made a knife from one,forged out into a rectangular rod,and ground into shape. It is a great blade.
These are the 2 images I have of it. It takes 2 men to lift. The carriage is mahogany stained dark. It is a copy of the "Long Toms" on the USS Constitution. The Mariner's Museum in Newport News used to sell drawings of this cannon,or they might have been sold by the USS constitution museum in Boston. I have forgotten where.
The barrel is bored out all the way,and the cannon can be fired,though as of this date,it has not been.
The barrel was laboriously bored on a 40" Grizzly 16" lathe. I used a 1 3/8" drill with a long shaft mounted on it. First,I took a light grind down the length of the drill with a tool post grinder to ensure its perfect alignment to the welded on shaft as it rotated in the lathe. And,a lot of large drills have a bit of bend to them,resulting in a scored hole. After I ground the drill's outer edges,it bored an amazingly smooth hole that looked as if it had been reamed.
Drilling the LONG hole was a LONG job! I had to make a special "chuck" to fit over the still cylindrical,and unfinished cascabel knob. This cascabel knob was held in the tailstock by the chuck,secured with a set screw. Later,the cascabel knob could be finally machined to its shape.
The cannon barrel's muzzle was fitted to a carefully made block of oak which fit over the V ways of the lathe. The top of this 4" thick oak block had a hemispherical cavity bandsawed into its top surface for the muzzle of the barrel to EXACTLY REST IN perfectly aligned with the centerline of the lathe. Any error would have been magnified as the drill got deeper and deeper into the cannon. In the end,the gun was well and truly bored out.
I rested the cannon,muzzle towards the chuck and fed it towards the chuck with the tailstock spindle. I found that once the drill was inside the bore,I could only drill about 1/8" before it was necessary to extract the drill to clear the chips. Needless to say,this took DAYS. The drill also had to be stuck farther out of the chuck as the drilling got deeper,and had to be gotten loose and pulled out every 1/8". This got more difficult the deeper I went. I think it took 4 day's work to drill this hole with the too short lathe!
The most tricky part of the job was installing the trunnions. In the 18th. C.,trunnions were made well BELOW the centerline of the cannon barrel. By the Civil War,they were on the centerline. This made things more difficult to do. I previously had made accurate drawings of the cannon's diameter where the trunnions were located. I drilled and tapped the raw 5" diameter length of bronze on the vertical mill,counterbored it so that the threads would JUST STOP before the point of being seen(Hope this makes sense!). And threaded clear through the bronze before moving it at all. I can't recall how I did this!!
The trunnions,when fitted,had to thread in with an INTERFERENCE FIT tight thread,and butt tightly together inside the bore. I made a special wrench to grasp the trunnions without damaging them. The wrench had just a round jaw that could be squeezed via a good size socket head cap screw. The round jaws were lined with a few layers of paper dusted liberally with rosin. It worked very well,the rosin gripping as firmly as any hex nut. I have done this other times to extract gun barrels without damaging the pristine bluing on them.
After the barrel had been finish turned on the outside and polished,the trunnions were inserted. A THIN touch of Prussian blue was applied to both where the unthreaded portion of the trunnions would meet the bottoms of their counterbores,AND where they would butt together. Then,the trunnions were tightly screwed in,recut,and re screwed until the blue transfered to both the bottoms of the counterbores and to the center of the gun where they met. Again,I HOPE this makes sense!!
With the trunnions in place,the outside contours of the gun turned and polished,the barrel was bored. In the end,this worked perfectly. The trunnions threads were just inside the barrel,and could not be seen from the outside.
I will now confess,I proceeded to make a steel barrel,and another bronze barrel BLANK,with just the trunnions installed at this point. MANY years later,these blanks would be gotten out,and finished barrels made from them,for Jon and myself. I now CANNOT lift my barrel to get it back into my own 16 x 40" Grizzly lathe,to polish the breech end,or to fit it into an OAK carriage. I need to get a strong helper!
While I made the barrel,my journeyman Jon made the carriage. The cannon barrel was taken to the engraver's shop for a dedication to be beautifully engraved on top of the barrel.
The boss loved it. A few of the women in the audience were said to say "What for"? Well,it's a BOY TOY!!!!!
If I ever get my cannon done,I will engrave around the muzzle,inside the concentric rings provided for it: "The last Reasoning of Free Men." One of the French Kings had "The last Reasoning of Kings" engraved on all of his cannon. Cannon is the plural of cannon,like aircraft is the plural,and deer is the plural. I hate to see professional writers get those things wrong! Jon and I have 5 gallon buckets of forged 1 3/8" BALL BEARINGS to use for cannon balls!! I made a knife from one,forged out into a rectangular rod,and ground into shape. It is a great blade.
Last edited:
