Contemporary Makers: High School Cannon by David Crisalli

Monday, August 5, 2024

High School Cannon by David Crisalli

As a 17 year old high school junior in 1970 I was already a muzzleloading enthusiast and had built two flintlock rifles from scratch. Then I decided I wanted to build a cannon. With a full-size, 2.75 inch bore iron barrel from Barney’s Cannons (for $350 shipped !!!) and a pair of 120 year old wheels from a Romanian Gypsy wagon, I started in fabricating all the wood, iron, and brass parts required. With only hand tools, many of the iron parts needed were beyond my capability to fabricate to original standards, so I had to make some compromises.

All of the “irons” on original guns were either cast or forged. With no equipment except access to a cutting torch, a wildcat grinder, hand drills, hack saws, a really old Lincoln stick welder, and a sledgehammer, I started making all the iron parts for the carriage as close to being historically accurate as I could. (I substituted brass in many areas for aesthetics.) I didn't even have access to an anvil, but there was a manhole cover in the street in front of my childhood home. If an iron part needed to be pounded into shape, I would heat it in a mud forge that I built in an old wheel barrel (to make it portable). With the forge set up in the front yard, and watching for traffic, I would take the heated iron out to the street and, using the manhole cover as an anvil, would pound the daylights out of it until it needed to go back into the fire for a reheat.....or until a car came along and forced me to stop for traffic.

1970

There were many other issues from laminating oak planks (to get stock of sufficient size for the cheeks and trail) to just trying to rig and lift the 550 pound barrel in the garage. It took a few months, but the cannon was ready for firing by mid 1970. I originally used it at my high school football games firing it first at our home team touchdowns….and then, because everyone enjoyed it so much, I fired it whenever anyone made a touchdown. I used it over the next 50 plus years both firing blanks for celebrations (New Year’s Eve, Fourth of July, etc.) and firing cannon balls at various targets (barrel stacks, plywood targets, old cars) on gun ranges.

Fourth of July Shooting 2017

Cannon Shoot

In 2022 I decided to completely refurbish the cannon and correct at least some of the things I couldn’t do as a high school kid a half century ago. The included photos show the result…..the barrel in now lined with a steel liner, almost all of the 1970s irons have been updated or replaced, the brass parts have been refurbished, the wood has all been refinished….and the wheels, now more than 170 years old and with only a new coat of paint, required no additional help and are still perfectly sound. Even though I won’t be, the cannon will undoubtedly be just as good for another 50 years….and hopefully more.

Cannon Barrel Lifted Off Carriage

First of all, at the end of the cannon bore reaming thread I had asked the ALR crowd about Teslong bore scopes. Because of the positive feedback I received, I purchased one and used it to do a much more thorough examination of the bore. Although the diameter of the bore had been corrected to a consistent 2.75", I didn't like some of the porosity I was seeing in the wall at various points. I had been shooting the gun for 50 years with heavy and light charges including charges up to 1.25 pounds of powder behind a 2.75 inch zinc ball....fairly stout for a non combat situation. In all of that, I never had reason to doubt the safety of the barrel. But this gun was cast in 1970 and, since then, almost all the barrels I have seen, iron or brass or bronze, have had steel liners with a welded breech installed. Since I was now intending to correct a lot of the cosmetic deficiencies on the cannon carriage, I decided that it would be best to line the barrel as well. So the reaming exercise had been a bit of wasted effort but I had learned a lot in the process.

Now re-boring and lining this barrel was far beyond the capability of the machines I own, or have available to me, and demands some specialized skills. So I called Mr. James Olsen at South Bend Replicas (where the barrel was originally cast under the tutelage of Mr. Paul Barnett at what was then "Barney's Cannons"). Jim agreed to rebore the gun to 3.25 inches and install a 1/4" thick DOM steel liner with a welded breech. So last week, I built a substantial crate and managed to wrestle the 600 pounds of barrel off the carriage and into the box. After sealing it up, a friend and I delivered it to a trucking company for shipment back to South Bend.

Although that all sounds fairly simple, picking the 600 pound gun barrel up safely off the carriage by myself was not an inconsequential task, so there is some back story..... In 1994, when the Northridge earthquake hit my area, my chimney had broken off at the withers, there was a fair amount of other structural damage inside the house, and the ridge pole in my garage had snapped in two partially collapsing the garage roof. In the process of fixing the garage ridge pole, I had jacked up the broken beam, slipped a second 2 x 12 under it, and then glued and screwed 3/4" plywood stiffeners on both sides of the double beams between the rafters to amalgamate them into a single 3" x 22" ridge beam. With that much beefing up, I figured that ridge pole could take an additional 600 pounds of load.....so I drilled a 2 inch hole through the beam near its top edge and in the center of the garage. With a chain rove through the hole, I hung a ratchet chain hoist on it and used that set up to lift the gun off the carriage.....

Cannon barrel suspended

Carriage Disassembled

Barrel Rebore

Cannon Rebore

Barrel Re-install

Cheek Brass Parts Refinished

Cannon Wheels Before Repainting

Someone asked me the other day where I came by the wheels for this cannon.......Originally I considered building a sea carriage for the gun as the solid wooden wheels were within my capability to make. However, I became enamored with the idea of a land carriage and thought I would take a crack at that version. The required wheels for a land carriage were the biggest problem. Living in Southern California, where a considerable number of western movies were made, one would think that wagon wheels would not be much of a problem to acquire. However, to find genuine wooden wheels that were in good shape and the right size turned out to be a huge issue. After traveling all over the San Fernando Valley, and looking at countless wheels that had been used as yard ornaments (and were therefore weather beaten to the point of uselessness) my Mother, by dint of tireless effort on the phone, finally located a huge antique warehouse (Dal’s Antiques) in Lawndale, CA. Having traveled down to Dal’s, I was initially disappointed when I asked about acquiring a pair of large, wooden wheels. The fellow I was speaking to said he didn’t have any wheels that size. But then he remembered that a full size, 19th century Gypsy wagon had just arrived from Europe. We went out back to look at it and it had four absolutely beautiful wheels that would have been just perfect for the cannon. But my initial excitement faded as I realized that I couldn’t use a whole Gipsy wagon and the antique guy couldn’t use a Gypsy wagon with only two of four wheels. As we both discussed the dilemma, he absent mindedly opened the door on the back of the wagon ….and there inside the wagon were two perfect condition spare wheels !! And both were equipped with the cast iron skeins that were needed for both ends of the axel !! So for $150, I became the proud owner of two oak wooden wheels that, although over 150 years old, were sound as a dollar and perfect for the cannon.