I want to thank everyone for their advice, and comments, especially Richard the Kindhearted, who actually offered to repair the damage himself.
Richard has also got a good eye for wood: All the wood used on the carriage is oak, and that includes the dowel. I also don't think it was cheaper to make the axles this way, if anything it seems more involved than cutting the axle bed, and then turning the axle arms on a lathe. This "Valley Cannon Works" certainly had someone that knew how to turn wood, look at the rammer's head. I also don't think this construction method made the axle arm weaker; to the contrary this is probably stronger than if the bed and arm were made of a solid piece of wood (whatever amount of pressure caused the oak to splinter like that, I'm pretty sure it would also have cracked the arm off an axle made of a solid piece of wood). I'm wondering if they did it this way for accuracy: By that I mean the axle arms could be pefectly centered on the axle bed, and this would prevent the carriage trucks from being uneven when resting on the ground (a problem that many of us who have made a four truck naval carriage from scratch may know about firsthand).
The reason that I'm probably going to eventually make the axles from a solid piece is because it would be authentic to the way the real axles were made, and I'm also going to drill the holes in the arms at an angle so the lynchpins are raked back.
For now I'm going repair it kind of like R.C. recommended, only change the order of which piece is glued first. I'll glue the bed that's splintered first, (using Gorilla glue) because I want the expanding nature of this glue to fill in any voids left between all the pieces when I try and work them back together. There are also
cracks down the center of the bed that you can't see in the pic, so I'm going to have to place two small nails on either side to open the split up, and then I can work some glue in the splits. Then I'll clamp it all up, (good idea on the waxed paper R. C.) and let it dry completely, and just clean up the dried overflow on the inside of the bed with a drill bit. From here on out, I'll switch to theTitebond II glue, the next step being to glue a new oak dowel into the bed, and let that cure. Then after I drill the remaiming bit of dowel out of the axle arm, I'll be able to gauge how much of the dowel to saw off to get a tight fit between the bed face,and inside face of the axle arm; then glue, clamp, wait, unclamp, sand a little, and refinish.
I don't want to go the route of having a steel rod all the way through the axle bed, but even if I did, the two key bolts coming down from the tops of the cheeks, that go through the axle bed, and are secured with nuts, would make doing this a little problematic.
Intoodeep; I disagree with some of the things that have been said about "Gorilla Glue," I think that it's great glue for specific purposes. "Gorilla Glue" is just the brand name for one of the many brands of polyurethane glues that are now on the market. Because there is now competition, this glue is now less money, but yeah it's still high; I recently bought some "Elmer's," and they call theirs "Ultimate Glue." I think this kind of glue is tough stuff, it really bonds things together, including wood to metal, and it is especially good when you have gaps to fill.
Here's a good example of using tha wrong kind of glue for the wrong purpose, and causing oneself a great pain in the butt for no reason whatsoever. I built this carriage ( I'm still working on the carriage, and the barrel) for an iron 10-inch cannon that I picked up at a flea market, and I decided to use Gorilla G. on all the wood joins. I quickly brushed water on the all the surfaces to be glued, then applied the glue as fast as I could, then put all the pieces together, and clamped everything up. I had used this kind of glue once before, so I knew it was going to expand. For the next hour or so, I held this carriage, and as the glue expanded I wiped, and wiped, and wiped, and............... As this stuff starts to cure it gets thicker, gooier, and best of all more sticky. I had this stuff all over my fingers, hands, and anything else I happened to touch, this was a genuine comedy of errors. Needless to say, I ruined the finish on the wood where I was rubbing; luckily I had used "Birchwood Casey's Tru-Oil Gunstock Finish," and I could reapply it with a cotton rag, by gently covering the areas where I had dulled the finish. The pics I've posted can be enlarged with good clarity if you save them, and you'll be able to see where the Gorilla Glue seeped and hardened between joins, (look at where the front transom joins the top of the axle bed) even though I began wiping the glue as soon as I was done clamping.
Now, as for gluing the red brass (euphemism for copper plumbing pipe) tyres on the trucks, polyurethane glue is perfectly suited to the task. I used it on these trucks and tyres, and also on the tyres of another naval carriage that I recently finished.
The last pic is of the quoin of this carriage, and I glued the brass wear plate to the bottom of the quoin (also the pinned brass stop) with "Brownells Acraglas Gel," which is a rifle barrel bedding compound (like KABAR mentioned) that is fantastic for adhering metal to wood when you can't use fasteners. I have a story about what that brass plate was made from that I'll tell another time.
Victor; I made the axles for this one the same way you did, with rasps, files, and sanpaper. Hey, if our house burns down, we just might decide to pack it in, and head out west, if I manage to save the cannon it'll be your payment for putting us up for a stretch.
