Cannons Anyone?

[Drm50]

I've had this cannon a couple years. It is a replica, bronze barrel. I know absolutely
nothing about replica cannons. It has never been fired, it is as clean as a whistle.
Outside of brass is patina. I have had offers from $25 to $750 that I turned down.
Others wanting me to donate it to museums for a tax write off receipt for donation.
I almost forget about it, till I stub my toes on it in the gun room. Been told it is a
Cannonade? Like to hear from cannon expert. From the looking I did I think it was
made by a St.Louis company in early 60s. When I find out exactly what I have Im
going to send that piggy to market. It's hard on toes.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Toes are overrated. The word is "carronade", as they were first made at the Carron ironworks in Scotland, in Napoleonic times. A lot of them had a single loop trunnion underneath, rather than two at the sides, but the shape, including that reduced muzzle, is the same. The big ones, such as those still on HMS Victory at Portsmouth, went up to sixty-eight pounders, which in close action compared very well with smaller guns of higher velocity. But the introduction of ironclads killed them off even faster than the very large long smoothbores.

They were nearly always iron, and positioning it further forward in the carriage would have resisted recoil better in horizontal fire. These factors leads me to think this was meant as a saluting, signal or yacht race starting . Merchant vessels did indeed often carry a single gun, not for defence but for signaling. It doesn't look like it was merely ornamental. As to whether it could be fired with ball, well, possibly. I would examing the bore carefully to see whether it was bored smooth. If it is just as cast, they were trying to tell you something. To fire without a long fuse? Don't be silly. But it could be the kind of gun you can have a lot of fun with.

[Drm50]

I would not be afraid to fire it, bore is like a mirror! Like you said, long fuse, my momma didnt
raise any fools although she has been credited with a near miss, with my brother. Back in 70s
i was a company man. When Union was on strike I had to go to work and do nothing. I would
go into machine shop and turn cannons out of steel bar stock. Bored them to accept a common
ball bearing that was replaced often. Had them Mag Fluxed for defects, but still used long fuse.

[OS OK]

Make yourself a bowling ball cannon, have a 'blast'! Find your balls 2 mile downrange...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2DlLHFU3dA

[jimb16]

Ballistics....that is a cannonade, not a carronade. The trunnions are on the sides. On a carronade, the trunnions are on the bottom of the barrel. That is one of the reasons that carronades often overturned on firing.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The carronade was always mounted on a conventional truck carriage for the first ten years or so of its existence. Then the slide carriage with lug under the gun was invented, and standard, particularly in the larger sizes. This went some way towards curing the carronade's tendency to damage its carriage with the violence of its recoil. But side trunnions were still used in some, particularly in the smaller sizes. I have been working intermittently for years on a planked model of a Victorian naval brig of the 1840s from Harold A. Underhill's very detailed drawings. She and her sisters were used in the suppression of the slave trade, but were familiar sights as training ships well into the twentieth century, and most certainly did mount four 24-pounder short guns and eight 24-pounder carronades with side trunnions, on the same type of carriage.

http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/what-was-carronade

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cannonade

[jimb16]

Then I stand corrected....

[John Taylor]

Shooting bowling balls is a bunch of fun. The finger holes whistle on the way up and down. Only need about 300 grains of powder to go several hundred yards out of a mortar.

[mazo kid]

I have a couple of friends who made bowling ball mortars; they set a 1/4" eyebolt in them and tied a ribbon on the bolts. I asked if that was to see the balls in flight....they said "no, it's to find the balls when they bury themselves in the ground when landing"!