When building the limber for the "Passion Cannon", I had made felloe-rings of poplar, then found some Chinese red oak to use instead. This meant I'd have two poplar rings left over, and I wanted to make something with them; I decided to model C.S. Forester's original cannon as described in his 1932 novel The Gun.
"It was an eighteen-pounder, thirteen-feet long, two-feet in diameter at the breech, and one -foot at the muzzle, made of that dark metal known as gun-metal." (the author here describes an actual type of Spanish artillery known as a Culverin)
"Those wheels were the wonder of a district that had known no other than solid wheels cut from a tree" (the author's erroneous description for a tripartite (means three-piece) wheel).
This model is 1:17 scale (0.7-inch to the foot), derived from the 3-1/2-inch diameter of the felloe-rings (representing a five-foot wheel), as opposed to the 1:12 scale for the "passion cannon" with its eight-foot wheels. It represents a new gun-carriage as built for the guerilleros by two village carpenters and "a smith of repute," as the gun had originally had been abandoned by the retreating Spanish army, and to hide it from the French was buried by the locals under a rock cairn in a quarry; after two years it was discovered by the guerilleros, but "the ironwork was honeycombed with rust, and the wood covered with lichen."
"Two wheels and an axle served as a limber". Here, Forester's description implies the tripartite wheel commonly used for carts in the Galician district in which the gun had been hidden. I've based the limber on the construction of those solid-wheel Spanish carts. These were the sort of wheels that the local carpenters would have been familiar with.
The wood pieces, and a pre-assembly with a character-figure representing 5-foot 8-inches height relative to the cannon.
The poplar barrel, first drilled through, lined with a brass tube, and turned between centers, and the cascabel (every projection behind the breech is considered to be in the cascabel), turned separately by gripping it's dowel-plug in a 3-jaw Jacob's keyless chuck mounted on a Jacob's Taper/Morse Taper to the Jet Mini lathe. The barrel was painted with Rust-Oleum Dark Bronze enamel, and the general woorwork stained with Jacobean Dark oak stain, then given a couple coats of BLO and mineral-spirits.
The metalwork is always the tedious part (necessary, but I prefer the woodworking); 26-gauge steel for the "tyres" and braces cut out with tin-snips and tediously straightened, then stripped in muriatic acid and heat-blued with a Bernz torch to simulate wrought-iron. The "riveted" bolts are all 16 or 18 gauge escutcheon pins, and each one had to get it's head sanded clear of plating for bluing, then cut to length and tapped into pre-drilled, slightly undersized holes, securing them with Gorilla-brand "magic-glue".
"It was an eighteen-pounder, thirteen-feet long, two-feet in diameter at the breech, and one -foot at the muzzle, made of that dark metal known as gun-metal." (the author here describes an actual type of Spanish artillery known as a Culverin)
"Those wheels were the wonder of a district that had known no other than solid wheels cut from a tree" (the author's erroneous description for a tripartite (means three-piece) wheel).
This model is 1:17 scale (0.7-inch to the foot), derived from the 3-1/2-inch diameter of the felloe-rings (representing a five-foot wheel), as opposed to the 1:12 scale for the "passion cannon" with its eight-foot wheels. It represents a new gun-carriage as built for the guerilleros by two village carpenters and "a smith of repute," as the gun had originally had been abandoned by the retreating Spanish army, and to hide it from the French was buried by the locals under a rock cairn in a quarry; after two years it was discovered by the guerilleros, but "the ironwork was honeycombed with rust, and the wood covered with lichen."
"Two wheels and an axle served as a limber". Here, Forester's description implies the tripartite wheel commonly used for carts in the Galician district in which the gun had been hidden. I've based the limber on the construction of those solid-wheel Spanish carts. These were the sort of wheels that the local carpenters would have been familiar with.
The wood pieces, and a pre-assembly with a character-figure representing 5-foot 8-inches height relative to the cannon.
The poplar barrel, first drilled through, lined with a brass tube, and turned between centers, and the cascabel (every projection behind the breech is considered to be in the cascabel), turned separately by gripping it's dowel-plug in a 3-jaw Jacob's keyless chuck mounted on a Jacob's Taper/Morse Taper to the Jet Mini lathe. The barrel was painted with Rust-Oleum Dark Bronze enamel, and the general woorwork stained with Jacobean Dark oak stain, then given a couple coats of BLO and mineral-spirits.
The metalwork is always the tedious part (necessary, but I prefer the woodworking); 26-gauge steel for the "tyres" and braces cut out with tin-snips and tediously straightened, then stripped in muriatic acid and heat-blued with a Bernz torch to simulate wrought-iron. The "riveted" bolts are all 16 or 18 gauge escutcheon pins, and each one had to get it's head sanded clear of plating for bluing, then cut to length and tapped into pre-drilled, slightly undersized holes, securing them with Gorilla-brand "magic-glue".
