A 10' 68pr barrel by my reckoning would then be the 95 Cwt weight pattern, generally known as the 68pr, 95 cwt. Does its engraved weight confirm this? What type of carriage are you working on, a garrison carriage, a sliding carriage?
Adrian
Hi Adrian,
I would need to check the engraved weight but I would guess the weight at about 95cwt give or take a pound or so.
We are mounting it on a traversing carriage/sliding carriage of which at the moment the traversing part of the carriage is just about finished apart from a small amount of metal work to be installed. I have started to build the upper part of the carriage or sliding part and have just ordered some of the steelwork for this the rest of it we will make ourselves as we have our own forge at the fort.
Our biggest problem at the moment is the steel rails it runs on as we have the details of the radius from one of the books from D&P Publishing that I posted up recently.
We have approach most of the local steam railway museums and have managed to have donated two lengths of world war 1 rail track, this type of track is easier to bend than the more recent type as the flange on the bottom is a lot wider on the modern stuff.
The first piece is from memory about 27ft long and the smaller one for the front is about 16ft long these need to be curved to 70 degrees. We have managed to bend the longer one using a crows foot by hand but it took 6 of us over 7hrs to bend it and we had really tied ourselves out by the end of it. The trouble is with the shorter one the curve is a lot tighter and the general feeling is that this is not going to work with rail track trying to bend it without really heating it up at a steel mill which would cost a lot of money. So we are looking at other options at the moment for the front piece.
I have quite a good relationship with the army (Royal Engineers Regiment) who are based next to the fort and they help us out from time to time so I will be speaking to them to borrow a crane for lifting the carriage and barrel into position when the time comes.
So the only other thing will be to get the barrel proofed and then fire it.........
Due to the cost of the powder I guess this will only be fired on very special occassions to proof it I guess we will go up to about 25 pounds of black powder to proof it then we will then probaly only use up to 15 pounds of powder when we fire it. Either way it should make quite a bang when it goes off.........
I will try and sort out some pictures when I am next at the fort and post them up.
Rivercat
