Anyone building 1/4" tripple cannons? Or have any relativly new ones they are willing to part with? I need to arm my my Impero. Jon
The only place I know of right now to get big gun cannons is some guy in Australia. Strike modles was working on some at one point, don't know why that got stalled. Then of course you can try and build your own. Good Luck
Strike hasn't stalled, they have made some progress last I heard but are still not ready for mass production but shows promise. As for building them myself, the cost for the tools and lack of know how would end up costing me far more then ordering from Australia, which is already to expensive. :/
Lack of guns is one of the single biggest things holding back Big Gun from growing. Until Strike gets production up and running, the only way to get guns is to either build them in a machine shop, or design the parts and send them to a machine shop. Although some people already have garage machine shops, others of us do not. That just leaves the second option. Ordering parts from a machine shop is an expensive proposition. However, the difference in price between ordering a single copy of each part, and ordering thirty copies of each part is fairly small. Thus you can significantly reduce unit cost by increasing the number of cannons you order. Furthermore, only a few parts need to change for cannons to fit different ships, and those can be made with a laser cutter. So here's what you do: 1) design a simple buna-ball valve, endcap, buna-ball support rod, and rotation mechanism in CAD. These parts can be mass produced by a CNC lathe. 2) design several different sizes and configurations of laser-cuttable magazines. 3) survey the Intarwebs to see who else needs cannons, and what they need. 4) Collect the money, order the parts, and ship them out. I wish I could help more, but I have very little free time these days.
To get by, you could build Arizona guns yourself. Not a lot to them, and if you build a jig, you can turn them out pretty handily, methinks. Also, in the interim, Strike may be working on some torp cannons that could be utilized in a limited fashion. The design was fascinating, appeared robust, but is not et tested (that I know of). As I understand it, he may be able to injection mold the pieces and then sonic weld it together with little, if any, additional machining. Should bring the price down if he can get enough sales to recoup the costs of making the molds. To make a triple, you can do it with just a drill press and some jigs, but it is a lot easier with a mill and/or lathe as well. Jon Charbonneaux used to make nice 1/4" and 3/16" single barrel guns for Queen's Own. Don't know if he still is. Cheers,
