While of poor quality, I've attached a pic of the guns aboard the Constitution. The pic is from a newspaper article I saved from my younger years. I ran across it today while I was looking for some photos of other cannon. Enjoy!
Harold
USS Constitution and her guns
USS Constitution and her guns
Wise people talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something.
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GeorgeGaskill
These are carronades; large bore, ...
short range weapons used for the final broadsides. Relatively light weight, they were mounted on the top deck. See the USS Constitution website for further details:
Constitution's Carronades
The 24 pounders were much longer range and much heavier so were mounted on the gun deck, the next lower deck.
Constitution's Long Guns
Constitution's Carronades
The 24 pounders were much longer range and much heavier so were mounted on the gun deck, the next lower deck.
Constitution's Long Guns
Last edited by GeorgeGaskill on Sat Aug 12, 2006 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: These are carronades; large bore, ...
Man, what a great site. I knew about the ship but had no idea there was a link. I didn't have a lot of time to spend, but I managed to make a print of the carronade, which is a great looking gun in my opinion, even though it doesn't have a lot of fancy detail.
I was shocked at the beautiful condition of the ship in general. Wish the pic of the long guns was a little better, but I'll run a print of the barrel and go from there. I'm hoping that there's some detail of the carriages somewhere on the site.
Thanks for all the info on these things. While I've always been interested, I've never gone out of my way to find anything about them. You've obviously been very busy doing so.
I've been looking in my file cabinet for an article I have that was published sometime in the 50's in Popular Science. I thought I knew where it was but I apparently have it with the missing photos of the beautiful Spanish cannon I told you about. The article is about a fellow named Harold Hurd, a builder of scale cannon in the 50's. I recall the photo on the first page of the article shows him ramming a charge in what I think was a field gun. He had built several cannon, all of which appeared to be faithfully reproduced miniature models of the originals, about 1/8 scale. They were a nice size, economical to fire, yet still large enough to not be toys. How frustrating it is for me to know I have things but can't find them!
I took note of the mould you made for the large mini ball. Very nice job. You've obviously learned a great deal about machining along the way.
Harold
I was shocked at the beautiful condition of the ship in general. Wish the pic of the long guns was a little better, but I'll run a print of the barrel and go from there. I'm hoping that there's some detail of the carriages somewhere on the site.
Thanks for all the info on these things. While I've always been interested, I've never gone out of my way to find anything about them. You've obviously been very busy doing so.
I've been looking in my file cabinet for an article I have that was published sometime in the 50's in Popular Science. I thought I knew where it was but I apparently have it with the missing photos of the beautiful Spanish cannon I told you about. The article is about a fellow named Harold Hurd, a builder of scale cannon in the 50's. I recall the photo on the first page of the article shows him ramming a charge in what I think was a field gun. He had built several cannon, all of which appeared to be faithfully reproduced miniature models of the originals, about 1/8 scale. They were a nice size, economical to fire, yet still large enough to not be toys. How frustrating it is for me to know I have things but can't find them!
I took note of the mould you made for the large mini ball. Very nice job. You've obviously learned a great deal about machining along the way.
Harold
Wise people talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something.
Re: not to be picky but..........
......... I thought carronades all had under mounted trunnions.
This is my .40 cal version.
This is my .40 cal version.
Tel
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GeorgeGaskill
I thought about calling them
of the trunnions versus underlug but decided to stay with Carronades since the other two references used that term, even if incorrectly. The South Bend Replicas website (see the Fort Ross page) refers to them as gunnades.
Last edited by GeorgeGaskill on Sat Aug 12, 2006 3:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: not to be picky but..........
Actually, the carronade was just a shorter cannon as stated in the Constitution site.
If you take a close look, most cannon of that period had the trunnions below center to some degree with hold down caps over the trunnions built into the carriage. This was because elevation was set with a edge or screw under the breech end of the barrel. The recoil would drive the back end down firmly onto the wedge. If the trunnion was above center, then the breech would pick up off the elevating mechanism and make consistent ranging nearly impossible.
The only muzzleloading ships guns I have seen with trunnions on center were swivel guns which had trunnions appearing to be centered on the bore. Probably to keep the pansy swivel gunners from getting thrashed by the handle during recoil.
If you take a close look, most cannon of that period had the trunnions below center to some degree with hold down caps over the trunnions built into the carriage. This was because elevation was set with a edge or screw under the breech end of the barrel. The recoil would drive the back end down firmly onto the wedge. If the trunnion was above center, then the breech would pick up off the elevating mechanism and make consistent ranging nearly impossible.
The only muzzleloading ships guns I have seen with trunnions on center were swivel guns which had trunnions appearing to be centered on the bore. Probably to keep the pansy swivel gunners from getting thrashed by the handle during recoil.