I think I've posted pics of it before, but this gun also has a Marsilly (taildragger) naval/garrison carriage.





Unlike the field carriage which can be allowed to free roll, the gun on the Marsilly cannot be fired without the breaching rope restraining it.
I fire it from a plywood shooting platform, fitted with eyebolts for the ropes.

Nifty, thanks for sharing. Do the full sized cannon recoil that much? I wonder how they managed that on the old wooden warships?

Actually, this barrel was made in Canada and is the only barrel I've ever purchased (aside from the Big Bang carbide cannon). The lathe I use can't drill/bore deep enough for a barrel this length. From breechface to muzzle is 16", about a foot is all I can manage on that bed.

I also bought the wheels for the field carriage, unfinished, which were made by Amish.
All of the other woodwork and brass and stainless fittings (except for fasteners) I did.

The companion mortar for this gun, and the golfball mortar, plus a couple of smaller cannons and handgonnes, I machined myself.

I have a billiard ball mortar drawn up, and have the steel for it, but just haven't had a chance to start cutting yet.

The mortars (along with their tompions) . . .



The center mortar is externally a 1/4-scale 24-pounder Union Coehorn, to make it a companion to the Napoleon, but it's bored as a 12-pounder so it can use the same balls (which I cast).

The little brass mortar is .69 caliber and was a gift in kit form.



ETA: I based my naval/garrison carriage on the Marsilly because it was commonly used with Dahlgren guns. The smooth rounded profile of a Dahlgren is not so far removed from the Napoleon as a typical early naval tube.

And the carriage was originally built on a tight schedule (and not totally finished in time, but close enough) to appear in a Halloween display in a friend's music store. I originally intended it as a quick and temporary display-only item, but once I got started I decided it had to be built to be functional and durable, and pleasing to the eye, and it has lasted several years and many firings.

Color me green with envy.

I'd like to get into scale cannons someday. I think a 1/2 scale Mountain Howitzer would be right up my alley.

One of the things about scale model cannons is that as you reduce scale mass is reduced exponentially.

An object reduced to 1/4 scale will be 1/64 mass. So that 1230 pound tube calculates to 19.2 pounds, which is damn near dead-on according to my scale.

And this is why bigger is better when it comes to scale models, anything smaller than 1/4 scale gets totally unrealistic. Even with scaled down ball and charges the laws of physics still apply and really small guns recoil much more violently than their full scale counterparts.

But this is where physics gets down with its bad self. Cap_Redleg states that his gun recoils around 7-8 feet with a live charge, mine with a proportionately scaled charge recoils very nearly the same amount. A little less probably due to less momentum, but not much.

But in 1/4-scale feet that would appear to be four times the distance.


For the record, my live solid shot charge for the Napoleon is a 1.125" ball (4¾ ounces cast from wheelweights) backed by 250 grains of Fg.

I also shoot grapeshot (nine .490 rifle balls) and canister (twenty-seven 000 buckshot pellets).

Now that I have a YouTube account, I need to get some video of the gun shooting these.

I plan to!

Here is a little preview from the last batch I made, canister and grapeshot.
The sabots are simple to make out of 1⅛" dowel. The tubes are double-thick Reynolds Heavy Duty aluminum foil, form then filled and sabot glued in.
They might wrinkle a little in the process but that's not a problem as long as they will pass through the gauge.




ETA: The .490 balls I cast myself (along with the 1.125" balls), the buckshot I bought. When this box runs out I think I'm going to invest invest in a buckshot mold.

Terry,

Great work as usual and throughly enjoyable. Lee makes a 18 cav 00 buck mold that should work for you.


CD
(still traveling and never home but enjoy missing the rocket man)