I attempted to make a quoin yesterday. I cut it to give the min and max elevation that I wanted, but after I cut it and tried it, I found that at times the cascable hit it, so it did not work out as planned.
When I was on board the USS Constitution a week ago, I noticed that most of the quoins looked different from each other... almost as if each one was hand shaped by a particular gun crew. The elevation was not a straight line on most of them, but curved. They must have figured out thru trial and error what they were doing.
Anyway, I glued some scrap wood wedges on the quoin that I made untill it did what the barrel wanted it to do. There is a minimum angle that will work. I guess there is no law that says I can not have multiple quoins. I can have one with a really mild angle, for "target shooting", and a different one that provides a higher elevation for whatever reason I might have to need that.
On the back of each one, I am adding a spacer block that will angle the barrel downward. That would be handy from draining water out of the barrel, or keeping the rain out of the bore.
I guess it would be good advice to cut one's first quoin out of scrap 2x6 or 2x 8 pine to get the angles correct, before commiting more expensive wood to the project.
For a quoin handle, I found some short table legs at the hardware store that I think will work out perfect. They are sort of fancy, and fairly cheap.
I also started trimming some of the thru-bolts to correct size. I assume most people noticed that the trunnion in my posted picture was not sitting flat on the carriage. The rod was too long, and I ran out of threads before it seated properly. I added a few more turns of thread and it looks much better now. I still have to cut the rods shorter so they look like I actually know what I am doing
Pictures will appear when I get something worth looking at.
