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Cost of an Ancient Warship
"vincent Brannigan" wrote in message ... Keith Willshaw wrote: The cost of boring (drill the main center tube) and turnign (trunnions) is the same. However the machinery required to cut rifling in a cannon bore is of an entirely different order from the simple boring process adopted for a smoothbore. no it is not. you still advance the cutterbut you synchronize the forward and rotational action. its called a "screw cutting" Yes I know There's a good reason why rifled cannon didnt appear on the battlefield before the 1850's and the rise of the machine tool is a large part of it. It wasnt until 1841 that the first standardised screw threads were introduced by Whitworth for example. Does not affect cannon. all you need for cannon is a precisly cut tool feeding controller. Cannon barrels did not require the precision that a machine screw required. But without screw threads how do you make your "precisly cut tool feeding controller. " Such devices were made possible by Whitworth and his colleagues and the simple fact is the maching of a rifled barrel requires a fair degree of accuracy if you are to have consistent accuracy which is rather the point. After all until 1745 cannon were basically hollow cast with maching being confined to cleaning out the bore. Moreover the Parrott's were reinforced with wrought iron hoops on the breech. Sure, but they did burst. a lot, because the thermal effects werenot well understood. Its more to do with the fact that cast iron is a poor material under tension. It being softer thats hardly surprising. but you could also make guns lighter than an equivalent Iron gun. which is why iron was preferred for naval and caost defense gusn and bronze for field guns. Actually bronze guns were preferred for all uses until such time as iron was available in adequate quality as well as quantity. They lasted better and were more consistent but the huge reduction in the cost of producing iron and increases in quality around 1776 with the introduction of the use of coke made them very much cheaper Keith |
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