"Capt. Mooron" wrote in message ...
"Peter Wiley" wrote in message
| Back to cannon, I'm in Sydney in a couple weeks. See what I can dig
| up. IIRC, there was some heavy wall pipe about perfect for a patched
| golf ball.

I was over to the metal supply shop and the owner showed me this beautiful
piece of brass... cylindrical 6" diameter stock, 36 inches long, solid and
ready for the lathe.... man o man could you ever mill that piece down to a
wonderful canon.

Yeah, but the problem is attaching the trunnions securely enough to
take the recoil. With steel, you can press fit then weld them on and
with BP propellant it'll be plenty strong enough. Brass, you'd have to
counterbore, press fit with a good anaerobic glue (ie Loctite) but the
forces are still gonna try to loosen the bond. Probably OK for
occasional use and appearance-wise, beautiful. Small brass cannon are
made this way and seem to stay intact. Maybe you could TIG weld the
trunnions; I've done fusion welding on brass and if you're careful
about inert gases, you can do it without the zinc boiling out.

Pity you're so far away. I have wooden patterns for a 6 pounder 1805
Naval gun that I used for my cast iron ones. Get a brass casting done.

My shop here at work recently took a metre of 235mm OD solid marine
grade aluminium and bored it out to 175mm ID for a pressure vessel
(underwater camera pressure case good to 2000m depth). Kept the
apprentice busy for quite a while & generated 2 200l drums of swarf.
Your brass cannon from solid is quite feasible and would keep you busy
next winter. That's in about 3 weeks from now, I understand :-)

Snowing on Mt Wellington this morning so I better not push it.....

Peter Wiley