How did some of you guys

[rusty barrels]

How did some of you guys that built close to full scale coehorns get the nice radius on the ends of the union platforms, they don't make router bits that big do they?

[seacoastartillery]

A bandsaw works well for these large radii.  Lots of blade tension and a slow consistent speed of work advance.  You layout with a compass on the side, of course.  Double check the squareness of the table to the blade before cutting.  Good luck!

Tracy and Mike

[CU_Cannon]

A good old-fashioned mallet and chisel.  It works much better on oak than pine surprisingly.  You have much more control over the cut.  On pine it had the tendency of tarring out.  The chisel was probably a little dull. 

Rough out the shape with a band saw or jig saw if you are laminating the base from thin pieces.  If you are using large pieces as the ordnance drawings show you can remove material with a skill saw.  If you change the depth of cut to follow the contour you could remove most of the material.  Then use a chisel to clean it up. 

Another thing you might try to use is one of those chainsaw cutters for an angle grinder.  I’ve never used one so it might not work as well as it sounds.

[GGaskill]

You can do the edges with a table saw and whack off a 45° cut for most of it.  Then work the rest with a small plane and finally coarse to fine sandpaper on a block.

[copdoc]

I cut the edges with a skill saw at 45 degrees, then a wood chisel, and finished it with an angle grinder and # 60 disc.  On the last one I used an angle grinder blade that is made like a chainsaw for part of it and for inlaying the barrel.  It would eat you up if you made a mistake but you can remove a lot of wood fast.  Cutting the radius was not too bad but inlaying the barrel with the wood chisel took hours.  Oh well, that is part of the therapy.

[CU_Cannon]

I think that any way you do it is going to take a while.  I decided to do a quick base for my 12 pdr. out of pine.  I figured once it started to get beat up I would make a proper oak one.  It still took over 15 hours to get it laminated and carved.  I wish I had gone with oak from the start. 

[GGaskill]

Cutting the radius was not too bad but inlaying the barrel with the wood chisel took hours.

On the Coehorns that I have made with a block mount, inletting the barrel was the single longest task.  I found on the last one that using a sanding drum in a Dremel was faster than using a chisel for the final adjustments.

[rusty barrels]

Thanx guys, I should have known it wasn't gonna be fast or easy.

[totallycustom]

For the inletting an air powered die grinder with rasp, file and then sanding attachments would be much faster and would probably be a better tool for the job,  always fit the tool to the job.  I think you can get a die grinder kit pretty cheap from harbor freight, maybe 20 bucks and many people have air compressors if you don't have one.  There are even electric die grinders a drill with the proper cutter would even work better than a dremel.  I often think that there is an overemphasis on the use of dremel tools.  There are far better tools at comparable prices.    Another helpful tool would be an air hammer/chisel, they are usually used for metal work but are equally effective for wood if the proper chisel is used, a metal chisel can be sharpened for use on wood, that would cut very quickly.  Often kits are available with die grinders, air hammers, other air tools, and the accessories/ air fitting for them.

Gotta work smarter not harder.

-TC-

[jeeper1]

I wish that when I was building my mortar base last year that I have 4 die grinders in my shop, inletting it would have been an awful lot easier. Must be old age.