I another thread on breech types, there is a comment that the foster gives more surface area for contact, one of my issues are barrel alignments. When you building the gun mount, is it better to hold the assembly by the Tee or uptube versus the barrels? I see a few have an "aligment" bracket at the end of the barrels, while others have a bracket at the end of the nut. I am thinking of taking 2 pieces of 1/4 aluminum stock, tapping them with 6-32 screws, then drilling out the center (each 1/4 bar has a half of the hole). Question is do I just go one size lower on the drill and let the two pieces compress the barrel, or will this give me alignment issues? How do you mount the guns (doubles or triples)?
I'm kinda interested in how fast gun cannons are mounted in general. I am quite familiar with big gun cannons, but fast gun cannons are completely different. I was hoping to take a close look at the build session when I visited SCRAP, but came down with a stomach bug and was unable to attend. I've got to start thinking about how the guns are going to go into my Invincible. Photos would be nice.
This is fast gun cannon, but it's probably a unique mount, so I'll claim it's a Treaty method. I re-threaded the bottom of the 90 degree fitting 3/8-24 and used thin nuts to mount it to an aluminum plate. The straight part of the plate acts as a pivot for gun elevation. Elevation is set using a nylon screw in the rear hole, and standard screws are used in the front two holes to hold the gun down. The whole assembly is screwed to a plywood plate glued inside the barbette.
It looks nice, but not unique. (I'm not claiming it, I saw it on someone's ship though) Are those copper tubing barrels?? Say it ain't so!
Much tooooooooo soft and not straight enough, The ells will develope dents at the top and hang fire. Good enough for Treaty but don't use them in a real battle.
Maybe the place you saw the technique was in my Roanoke build thread. The barrels are BC barrels, not soft copper for sure, but I'm not sure exactly what the material is. I have pretty much changed to stainless since I took the picture, mainly because I can use less pressure with a close tolerance barrel.
Nah, I saw it in person, I have not been so fortunate as to see your work in person, it is ART and I look forward to a first-person view someday. Maybe I'll order a kit for the cruiser
I will post some photos of mounted cannons in a couple of my ships for Gascan. Sorry you couldn't make it to the garage, it was a good session. I had to leave about 8 to start heading back home, but the guys were working until the wee hours of the morning. Whereabouts are you living at now? Are you still in the San Jose area? I'd be more than happy to come over to work on boats with you, maybe meet up at Stephen's place and crank some things out. Let me find my camera, figure out how to post pictures, and then post them.
This is a BC straight mag cannon that I bent into a 'U' to fit into Nagato's "A" turret: http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj113/renodemona/Boat%20Construction/IMG_0006.jpg http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj113/renodemona/Boat%20Construction/IMG_0007.jpg http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj113/renodemona/Boat%20Construction/IMG_0005.jpg Pretty typical mounting of straight magazine type cannons to the deck, typically used for stern or bow guns placed side by side. These are the dual sterns in my Noshiro light cruiser: http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj113/renodemona/Boat%20Construction/IMG_0004.jpg http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj113/renodemona/Boat%20Construction/IMG_0003.jpg Pretty typical mounting of a coil magazine type cannon to the deck/barbette, typicallu used for sidemounts or stern/bow guns in single mountings. This is one of the haymakers in my Fuso: http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj113/renodemona/Boat%20Construction/IMG_0002.jpg http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj113/renodemona/Boat%20Construction/IMG_0001.jpg I hope that is at least slightly helpful.
Renodemona, it looks like those guns are glued to the deck, with minor adjustments via bending the vertical riser slightly. Is that correct? And is that method more common than the screwed-down, adjustable mounting that RCENGR made?
Up here I see alot of guns where the magazines are ziptied to the deck undersides or mounts in the barbettes, and the barrels are held in position for final alignment generally by blocks, more zipties or whatever means of clamping struck the builder / skipper as a possibility at the time. A system like RCENGRs is not common in my experience. I'll try to find some pictures too.
I hard mount (ie resin or glue) my cannons to the deck/barbette with any minor adjustments made by bending the uptake tube, or prior to final mounting. Once the guns go in, it is very unusual for me to make anything more than minor adjustments to them. I try and keep the whole gun as stable as possible to keep it pointed at exactly the same spot on the water. Most, maybe all, ships I have seen battle regularly opt to stabalize the cannons as much as possible for the same reason. Really annoying to have a cannon break loose in the middle of a bump n grind sidemount battle. I think that there is a pretty even mix between such hard mountings and zip-tie mountings. The mountings in the Worcester cruiser look like hard mountings using screws rather than resin to me, but the principle is basically the same. I have seen some of these around, but not many. Some people use a bracket at the end of the barrel to keep and/or alter the alignment (typically elevation for stern guns) though most folks mount the cannons using the magazine and uptake tube only. The barrels should be able to be completely removed from the cannon without the cannon falling out of the ship as sometimes (rarely) you might get a stuck BB that can only be removed by taking the barrel off. Also, tweaking the cannon is done by tightening or loosening the barrel nut so a tightly held down barrel might interfere with that. There are also a few fast gun ships with rotates out there, obviously these are hard mounted into some kind of sleeve. Todd Olson down in SCRAP had a rotate sidemount in the Derfflinger, but now that his sone is using it he took it out and went to a more traditional setup.
This is what I did, a block to mount the barrels on a foster breech cannon. This way I control the position of the barrels and don't need a bracket at the end. The rest of the gun is unsupported except for the end (just to keep it straight). If needed I can remove the block from the holder to do maintenance with relative ease. With the barrel supported, the nut is not affected when tweaking.
Thanks for the input Carlo. It is good to see that you still feel the need to depreciate Treaty on the sites. It leads me to believe that we must be doing something right. Perhaps I can stand down from the overly-protective stance in the past to more of a tickled, and amuzed by your posts. Mikey
