A little brass cannon I made

[george wilson]

Actually,I am making. Easier to search If I end the posting with "I made",though. This barrel is not yet polished. It is as turned,and it is amazing how every speck of metal dust shows up as soon as a closeup picture is taken. I'll post again when it is polished. Then,the carriage (naval type) will have to be made.

It is something I decided to have some fun doing while waiting for the finish on another project to dry. The cannon barrel is 8 3/4"long. Maximum diameter is 1 1/4" at the breech.

Of course,my wanting to have fun was immediately tempered with the knowledge that one just cannot make a model of a historical object without making sure that all the proportions and details are correct. Otherwise,it just becomes a fantasy piece of junk from the get go. Therefore,I had to make a scale drawing of all measurements,moldings,and other details. Then,the installation of the trunnions is a very important thing from a safety standpoint.

The trunnions in originals were cast from the solid. Mine must be threaded in. They are 3/8" dia.,with 24 threads per inch,fitted snugly and Loctited in place. The gun was bored after the trunnions were in as they go clear to the bore. I allowed myself the "error" of making them on the centerline of the barrel to make the threads as deep into the gun and as strong as possible. On the real guns of the USS Constitution, and on larger size cannons I have made,the trunnions are below the centerline. Since I intend my things to actually work,I'll proof test it to make sure the trunnions don't blow out. I could have silver soldered them in,but cold rolled brass is much stronger than cast brass. Heating the barrel red hot would have rendered the brass to the cast brass strength.

A Dutch gunsmith in the 18th.C. figured out how to make brass pistol barrels stronger: He wrapped thick,flat,cast brass sheet around a mandrel and brazed it. Others stopped there and bored their pistols. This smith then hammered his brass barrel into a harder state before boring and finishing it. You can see George Washington's brass barrel pistols at Mt. Vernon. One of them is burst open as his barrels weren't hammered. Brass barrels were usually Naval to resist salt water.

Brass and bronze cannon were prized because when they burst,they split open rather than shattering like cast iron,killing everyone around them. But,records of the times cannon were fired were carefully kept. After so many firings,they were re melted and cast into new guns. The metal was rendered a bit more work hardened with every firing,and had a finite life.

I made several form cutting tools to do the repeated small moldings,and the ogees on the larger moldings,and in the breech area,and cascabel knob. The molding on the cascabel knob looks smaller than the other tripartite moldings,and it is. This was accomplished by applying the same form cutter to well below the centerline of the turning,allowing the molding to be made much less tall than the others without the cutter bottoming out on the knob too soon.

There is a shallow groove just at the end of the breech where I'll stamp my name,etc.,when I'm not too nervous. The groove just fits a set of nice

1/16" serifed stamps I have.

The teat on the end of the knob will be cut away after I have used it to support the barrel while polishing it in the lathe. The other end will be in a collet,or I may insert a mandrel in a collet to support the muzzle end.

Thus far,I spent about 10 hours on the barrel,some of which was in making form cutting tools.

I'm thinking about what the carriage should be made from. The scale of the grain is a consideration as well as the color of the wood. A light wood will give an entirely different effect than a dark color. Oak would have been used,but that has too large a grain for the scale of this gun. I might just make the carriage authentic in form,but use rosewood or ebony or boxwood,or violet wood. I have a nice piece of very old,perfectly quartered Santo Domingo mahogany that would look very nice. It was cut from my plank into a round piece to make a turning from,but has a crack. I may be able to get the carriage from it.

I've added a few pictures. The small picture is of turning a much larger cannon. It is over 30" long. 1 3/8" bore. I have several hundred 1 3/8" bearing balls for it!! The other additions show how the trunnions were held for cutting the little rings. One picture shows how little clearance I had over the cross slide of my Hardinge lathe. Also is a good view of the breech,but lots of tiny metal dust hanging on. You can see how detailed the moldings really are. The knob barely cleared the cross slide of the Hardinge, else,I'd have had to use the large lathe,which isn't as much fun to use as the Hardinge HLVH.

If you notice the bright steel tool holder,I made about 20 of those for myself and my worker,Jon,who has an HLV(earlier than HLVH). They wanted $275.00 EACH for those from Hardinge back in the 80's. I milled out long strips of them on steel bars and cut them off like slices of bread. Tapping all those holes was the main work. Had 1 original to go by. It wasn't even hardened. Stuff like that hasn't helped American made machines stay in manufacture. I think it took me a day or 2 to make 20 of them.

In actual size,the gun looks pretty nice and will need little polishing. The magnified pictures make it look a lot rougher than it really is. The pictures that are not magnified show what it really looks like.

[David Weaver]

Looks nice. What is the bore diameter? I wonder if you could get the mrs. to video the proof......

I noticed before in reading about the armaments in the civil war that the infantry was particularly fond of some of the artillery that was wrought iron, and not so much the cast guns. The parrotts had a big band of wrought iron around the breech.

What's interesting about the artillery is that we assume people were wheeling things out and blasting away, but the good guns were extremely accurate and could be more accurately aimed than I would've guessed. Just another reason to respect the practical application skills and innovative sense that prior generations had.

[ray hampton]

nice barrel,kypd

[george wilson]

The bore is .50 caliber. I didn't want to make it that large as I have a bunch of 3/8" ball bearings. But,I didn't have a long 3/8" drill or reamer,and did not feel like making one from an energy standpoint. I could line the gun with a steel sleeve,but wouldn't like to see it at the muzzle. I think I'll place the gun behind a large tree,and stand on the other side while proofing it with a double charge and 2 balls. These guns really are as deadly as a .44 magnum,perhaps more so,because the round balls flatten out. In the Civil War,they preferred to use round balls in their pistols rather than conical because the round balls killed better. I have a 1" bore cannon that shot a steel ball bearing right through a 6" OAK log!!

To my knowledge,cannon were not reinforced with wrought iron (except the very ancient ones,which were made of wrought iron staves banded together like a wooden barrel which is why they are called barrels!). But,wrought iron early on,and in the 18th.C. was hand processed and very costly. Possibly too expensive to reinforce guns with until manufacturing had gotten more efficient.

[Bruce Page]

That will be beautiful when you get it polished up. I didn't know you had a Hardinge toolroom lathe. If you had a choice between the Hardinge and a Monarch 10EE Which would you choose?

[Chris Griggs]

That's really cool George. So your saying you're actually going to fire that thing?

I'm excited to see what you come up with for the carriage. I love your "I made threads".

I particularly like your attention to detail in the scaling. Makes me want to start making replicas of full size cases/bureaus/chests that are scaled to fit on a dresser. I've made small chests and cabinets before but i've never tried to replicate something large to a smaller scale exactly.

It's great how a project like this can inspire all sorts of different things.

[george wilson]

I suppose I'd HAVE to say I'd prefer a 10EE Monarch. It has a wider thread range,and up to 4000 rpm rather than 3000,and it has a slower minimum speed,which I'd REALLY like.

BUT,the HLVH is so easy to maneuver the carriage and cross slide it's like driving a great sports car. Neither lathe was made for heavy work,though some of the hacks at NASA,according to my machinist friend,have screwed up some of the 10EE's which they had rebuilt by Monarch for very big bucks,indeed. They ignore the small spindle,and try mounting way too heavy work on them. Pretty hard on them. Both have class 9 bearings. In the 80's,Hardinge wanted you to detach the headstock and send it back to them,and pay $1250.00 for new bearings to be put in,and properly pre loaded. Probably costs at least 2x that(or more) by now. Fortunately,mine are still fine. I think the government(former users) replaced worn parts before I got it,as there's little backlash anywhere,,and it's a 1964.

My main worry with a 10EE is the drive mechanism. They always have to be converted to something more modern,unless you're a real electrical tech. I actually bought one a few years ago,but with my back trouble I just didn't feel like pulling out its heavy motor and components,and converting it to a VFD. You have to keep the gearbox,machine an adapter with splined shaft for it,etc.,but mostly,I'm not much of an electrician beyond standard things most can do.

If I found one that ran,and only needed painting,no electrical,I'd be very happy to get it. But,I'd keep the HLVH though their work envelopes are quite similar.

Here are a few pictures of a larger cannon I made,fully polished. It is 5" dia. max.,about 30" long. As mentioned 1 3/8" caliber as I have hundreds of bearing balls that size(actually,the bore is a little larger to allow for wadding.)

Then,there is my messy HLVH with stuff all over it after I spent a long time restoring it. Had thousands of chips in the paint. I made the oak tool shelf seen behind the lathe. There was an aluminum shelf there someone made for it. I saved the legs and made the cabinet,French polished with Siam seedlac which never loses its shine like shellac does. Very nice color,too. There are many small freehand turning tools I have made for the antique parts work I frequently do,such as ivory and boxwood bobbins for high class mahogany spinning wheels my main customer collects.

SORRY,I just saw that the big cannon is quite out of focus,and I had a time trying to get this post to load. The muzzle in the closeup is about 4" in diameter. Note the below centerline trunnions on the large cannon. There is a 2 foot steel rule laying in front of it.

[David Weaver]

Just the parrott rifles had the wrought band around the breech of the gun. I'm not aware of any other field artillery from the civil war that was (there may have been, though, I don't know that much about civil war history despite growing up in gettysburg). There were bronze cannon, wrought and the cast parrott with the wrought breech band.

I wish I would've paid more attention to the technical information available growing up, but I wanted to avoid the "tourons" back then (that being the local word for people who stop their car in the middle of the road to read a sign).

[george wilson]

I want to make a working(firing) model of the Monitor's turret,with the 2 15" guns in it. We have the original Monitor with a full size reproduction of the turret at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News. The original turret is likely still in the big desalinization tank down there. Not sure how long it will be there before coming out for display.

Unfortunately(if you want to make sense of the turret model) it is made upside down,as is the original. So,the cannon are jumbled about along with everything else.Use is seen of things like railroad rail to strengthen the roof of the turret. A lot of railroad iron was used in both of the original North and South iron clads. It was the heavy metal they had on hand at the time.

Only 1/2 loads were allowed in the Monitor's cannon since they were in too big a rush to proof test them. Had they been allowed to have full loads,I think the fight would have been short but not sweet.

Someone in the early 20th.C. thought that those old 15" guns didn't pack a big punch. They test fired one at a target and found that the old guns hit with several millions of foot pounds force!! Why would anyone have thought they weren't powerful in the first place? Not as powerful as large caliber modern guns,but they packed plenty of punch!

You guys are possibly thinking I'm a cannon freak,but actually,I have made only a few: a large bronze gun for my retiring director,another for myself years later,a 1" bore steel barrel naval mount gun,and this little one. I ought to make more since I have several big bars of brass bought at the scrap yard way back before it went out of sight. Also,I have large diameter(for a home shop) bars of steel,too,maybe 6" in diameter. Too heavy for me to handle alone,though. I'd need help getting the metal on and off the lathe. At least my 16" x 40" lathe can handle it.

[Bruce Page]

When I went to work at Los Alamos Nat’l Labs in the 70’s they had 25 or 30 Hardinge lathes scattered around the main shop and maybe a half dozen EE’s. The tool room was exclusively Hardinge. Several years later I went to work for Sandia Nat’l Labs and they had a couple dozen EE’s and a handful of Hardinge lathes. But, their tool room was exclusively Hardinge too. It’s hard to beat the Hardinge for fine work but given a choice I would take the more muscular EE.

[george wilson]

Bruce,did the Monarch's carriages slide as easily as the Hardinge's? Their carriages are much heavier than the Hardinge's. Of course,they have a much larger carriage handwheel.There are many engineering features on Monarchs that Hardinges do not have: Monarchs have back gears,forced automatic lubrication of the carriage and compound,lubrication reservoir in the tailstock,huge threading range and so many more features. But,I think I can fix most everything that could go wrong with a Hardinge's mechanical variable speed range,which is simpler than the Monarch's many times over. Since I have so much back trouble,and can't get down there and stay long to work in the motor compartment,it's just safer for me to have the HLVH. If one of the large bank of relays goes bad,it's electrician time,though!! Plus,some of those large,old relays aren't readily available anymore(I think). My journeyman's HLV wouldn't start for years. Fortunately,his son is now an engineer in the machine World,and got him a relay somewhere. With the collet system I have,I often can avoid turning the lathe off and on when feeding smaller bar stock through the spindle,making repeat parts. I just snap the collet open and the rod will often pop forwards enough to grasp it and pull it out for the next part.

I just hope the 1 H.P. motor doesn't go bad. It's a 2 speed,and as large as a 5 h.p. motor,and not easily accessed. Made to run forever. The HLVH is a very heavy little lathe.

I'd LOVE to have been in those machine shops,Bruce!! Must have been some fantastically high quality machines in them,no doubt the very best. I know they buried 10EE's in the Desert that had been used to turn radioactive materials. What a terrible waste,but I guess it just couldn't be helped.

In the final analysis,for the usually decorative type of work I do,you could make this cannon on a wood turning lathe with the proper turning tools freehand. They turned metals freehand hundreds of years ago. I often still do it when making replacement parts for antiques. See below the bobbin,flyer(antiqued brass),and iron shaft for a high class spinning wheel that my wealthy customer out bid the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for. This class of wheels were playthings for the super rich in the 18th.C.. They were made of mahogany with fine inlay work,small,metal wheels instead of the usual larger wooden ones. Their bobbins were ivory on the discs and boxwood shafts with little leather bearings like sleeve bearings in their shaft holes.

One is the original,and one is my reproduction. This work was mostly done with freehand turning tools. All is personal skill,not machine's accuracy. The hard things to do are getting the aged ivory look correct(embedded fine soot and yellowing),and getting the old brown color of the boxwood correct. Aging the metal is a lot easier. I like it when she has to ask which is the original because she is the most observant and particular customer I have ever dealt with. Most craftsmen won't work for her. I like to. I'm forgetting which is the original now,myself. There is a hidden,left hand iron nut inside the pulley on the left. The threads are interchangeable with the originals. I have to make a left hand tap every time she brings me any old flyer to copy,or make a nut for. They are all left hand threaded,and the threads are not of modern form.

The boxwood was light yellow,and the ivory snow white before aging them. Same for the metals. My wife took the pictures because she is good at it.

[Zach Dillinger]

George, you make the coolest stuff! I wish I had the aptitude for metal work. I've tried, took two years of machine shop classes but just don't have the touch I guess. I'll have to stick with wood.

Zach

[george wilson]

Curiously,I have never been considered "cool"!! WHY does it take a nerd to make COOL things?? Someone please explain that to me!!

[Chris Griggs]

Curiously,I have never been considered "cool"!! WHY does it take a nerd to make COOL things?? Someone please explain that to me!!

Because to be really good at something you have to spend hours alone practicing. Or vise versa, people who prefer to be alone tend to get good at things that require lots of hours of independent practice. Not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg.

Either way all that time alone doesn't exactly promote social prowess. Even though I'm fairly social, I spent a great deal of time in high school and my first two years of college alone in practice rooms and the band room trying to become a highly skilled percussionist/drummer. Now I sit alone in my basement working on projects trying to become a skilled craftsman. I'm constantly amazed at how similar learning music and learning woodworking are. Its all does the same thing for me, and requires the same type of discipline and self assessment of ones progress. I always made sure I had just enough social prowess to occasionally get a girl and eventually a wife but beyond that was and am fairly nerdy.

We all think your really cool George, but I don't know how much that's worth coming from a bunch of woodworking internet forum geeks.

[ray hampton]

Curiously,I have never been considered "cool"!! WHY does it take a nerd to make COOL things?? Someone please explain that to me!!

What do you consider the opposite of a nerd to be ?
the answer will need to come from a nerd and from the exact opposite

[george wilson]

I freely admit that my social skills are not the best. I grew up on isolated light houses until I was of school age,and was not around other children during my formative years. I played music too (ruined the joint of my right thumb finger picking since about 1952. Don't play now due to thumb pain. Endless hours is correct.

And,I much prefer to be in the company of nerds and geeks!! I wish I'd have searched out more of them when I was young. Too limited by distance and no car back then.

[Bruce Page]

George, I never found any lathe that had the carriage feel of a Hardinge. The EE’s felt loose compared to the Hardinge but were also very accurate.
You certainly get spoiled working at places like Los Alamos and Sandia. Los Alamos has downsized their main shop to a fraction of what it was in the 70’s and Sandia has closed their shop all together. Very sad really, they both had excellent apprentice programs.

[Ryan Baker]

Our main prototype machine shops at work are all full of serious CNC equipment these days, but the remaining manual machine shops are still filled with big Hardinge lathes and Bridgeport knee mills. Oh how I wish I had access to that kind of equipment! The things I could make! We used to have access to a smaller shop with a Bridgeport mill and a smaller Hardinge lathe (no idea what model, but it looked at lot like George's). Those were nice machines to work with for what little time I got to spend there. That shop has since been dismantled and replaced with an ultrasonic parts cleaner that has probably only been used once. Everything gets outsourced these days.

I hold out hope that one of these days I will get my hands on a lathe and maybe a mill (not likely Hardinge, but...), not that I have anywhere to put them or the power to run them. Until then, I will just have to live vicariously through George's projects, and then return to my world of hacksaw, file, drill press, and a dose of stubborn determinism. The hard part is that between getting some teaser time on real machines, seeing George's posts, and a healthy dose of engineering mindset, I spend a lot of time dreaming up projects that exceed my tooling capabilities. I guess that's my nerd-sport -- spending countless hours alone in the shop trying to find ways to "make it work" with the gear I have.

Anyway, I agree that you "make the coolest stuff" George. Keep challenging us to challenge ourselves.

[george wilson]

If you want to see something COOL,here are pictures of a fully working abt. 1/3 scale model of an HLVH that an old German guy I met made. It was made from blocks of cast iron,and the bed fits jeweler's lathe tailstocks (as well as the Hardinge type tailstock that is on the lathe. He built it over a 20 year period. It came with MANY extra change gears which were like jewelry. The variable speed was entirely electronic.

I'd have loved to have had this lathe to keep in my study!! It went for $16,500.00 at auction,which was more than I could pay realistically,it not being something necessary to have. I thought the low price it brought was a sin. He had to sell as bunch of things to pay for his wife's health care.

As usual,my pictures are bad. It was sold at the Cabin Fever Expo a few years ago. I went up there solely to have a chance at bidding on it.

On real HLVH lathes,in addition to the quick change gearbox,you can buy extra gears(for $500.00 a pair!! 1980's prices),and cut any thread you want.(this info for those not familiar). The HLVH is engineered to be so easy to operate. You just disengage the regular gears,and add the extra gears on the easily accessible outside gearbox. To use the taper attachment(which I don't have),you just loosen the hex head bolt that is easily accessible on the top of the cross slide.

The dials are in white plastic to easily be read. There is an independent variable feed motor on the carriage. If you get a squeak or the cut doesn't look perfect,just turn a dial a bit until the cut is perfect. Turn on the sliding feed and the crossfeed together,and the tool will generate a perfect 60º center to put your work against. Spindle accurate to 50 millionths.

I will add that while the HLVH is very simple and easy to use,it is a pretty complicated lathe internally. Everything runs on roller bearings in the carriage. Everything is adjustable for sliding fits and backlash. The crossfeed and compound both have adjustable nuts to deal with wear on the leadscrews. I happened to pick up 2 brand new crossfeed screws. Gave 1 to Jon for his HLV. They probably cost $400.00 each by now. Maybe more. Got these 2 at a used machinery place fort $10.00 each. Guess they had no idea what the screws fit!!

I wish I had the energy to make a lathe like this. Or,better yet,to make a design of my own clear from wooden patterns cast in iron.

This little lathe swings about 3" and is about 10" between centers,same as a normal jeweler's lathe.

[Bruce Haugen]

I can't imagine the skill it takes to do anything you do, George, or to build that lathe from scratch. I don't know if you're a member over at OWWM, but there is an interesting build thread going on that might interest you. The guy is making a small bench-top mill from scratch. Here's the link (http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=110014). You need to be a member to see the pics, but it's free and carries no obligations.

[george wilson]

I've registered,Bruce. Will wait to see the link,and thank you.

The ship model behind the lathe(I SHOULD have taken more pictures) is of a destroyer escort. It is quite functional,radio controlled,gun turrets move and actually shoot blanks. They are repeaters,too!! Although,the POP,POP!! sound is a bit of a let down. I wonder how you go about cleaning them,as their internal revolver mechanism is pretty complex. Must be accessible,I suppose.

He also made a German coastal type submarine,WWII type. It will submerge,surface,and actually fires 3" long electric torpedos that run to their targets!! Quite complex work both mechanically and electrically. This guy has boundless energy.

He was also selling several sailing ship models,none of which had a single knot in any of the rigging. All spliced properly. One only brought $2000.00.I should have bought it,but didn't. Pretty terrible having to sell off his life's free time for so little.

If I had any of his working models,I'd never have put them in water. They don't have to be working toys. Just looking at the workmanship would be enough for me.