Jukar 1/3 scale Mtn Howitzer

[copdoc]

Has anybody ever seen one of thes?  I won it at a NSSA artillery school. About the only stroke of luck I ever had.  I have not seen another and it has a serial number in the 28 thousand, so there must be more of them.  It if rifled with a 50 mcal bore.







 

[Cpt Ed]

Your Cannon is a scale Model of the US 12pdr Mountain Howitzer on a Pack Type Carriage. It was offered for sale in the 1981 CVA Muzzleloading Catalogue as “7 Cavalry Cannon”, and is also listed in the 1985 Dixie Gun Works Catalog.

Some of the stats. from the CVA Catalogue is as follows: Barrel length-12”, Rifling-8 lands and deep grooves. Wheel Dia: 11 ˝”, Height: 11 ˝” overall, Length: 22” overall, Weight: 16 lbs., 2 oz., Accessories: Handspike.  Caliber: .58, Fires a .562 patched round ball with 30 grains of 1fg or 2fg black Powder.

 PS: Sorry this is an old picture before the Powder Can Requirement. Forgive me you OLD Timers.     

[copdoc]

Thanks Cpt Ed
I won this about 6-8 years ago.  I had not heard of Jukar and could find very little at the time on the net.  From the looks of this web page I knew somebody knew about it and I bet several people have one.  It is a pretty nice little gun.

Do you know anything about Jukar?  Are they the Mfg.  There have been a lot of firearms companies in Spain but I had not heard of this one.
Here is a little better side view I just took.

[Cpt Ed]

Sorry "copdoc"

I haven't any information on "Jukar".

Maybe another reader can fill us in on Jukar.

[Cannoneer]

Jukar was and may stiil be the name of a black powder arms maker in Spain. Connecticut Valley Arms imported these Mt. Howitzers and a few other models of cannons from this company and distributed them in the States under their own name in the 80's; back then they came in kit form with bright barrels and hardware that needed to be finished or plated and you had to assemble the carriages.
Traditions Performance Firearms now sells this line of cannons but they don't offer the Howitzer anymore. They carry two sizes of Napoleons, two different naval guns and a Revolutionary War cannon. All these guns are sold assembled and the steel is now nickel plated.

_John

[copdoc]

thank for the info  guys


The bbl is in the white and is covered with clear polymer.  It might be nice to nickle plate it.  I have a traditions Napolian my Dad bought from his neighbor last year and gave it to me for CHRISTmas.  I guess that was luck.  The neighbor said he bought it on an impulse and then wondered why he would buy such a thing.  It had the Traditions marking on it but does not have Jukars.  They are both pretty well made.  Now I need the whole collection of Traditions Cannon.

[Cannoneer]

The larger Nap. (.69 cal.) offered by Traditions is also available with "gold" plating. The 12.5'' "Old Ironsides" .69 cal. naval gun has a black matte finish. I remember that one of the forum members bought one of these naval guns and said he wasn't too impressed with the truck carriage but that it was a good quality barrel.
Not all of the CVA guns were marked Jukar, my .69 Napoleon is just stamped Spain.
If the Traditions Nap. you have is the .69 cal., would you do me a favor? I know this is going to sound odd but bear with me. I'd appreciate it if you would check out the fit of the Howitzer barrel on the Napoleon's carriage. Do the trunnions have a good fit when mounted on the Field carriage?

_John

[copdoc]

Sorry the Napolian is 50 cal. and much smaller.   It would not be even close.  Do you want anything measured.  If so I could do that.

[Cannoneer]

I didn't realize the small cannon in the photo was the Nap. you were talking about, I thought you might have the .69 cal. model.
Don't bother with the measurements, I'm almost sure your Howitzer tube would be too small for the larger Napoleon's carriage, I was just curious about something. Here's what Im getting at; about a year or so ago there was a CVA Howitzer barrel (no carriage) up for auction on e-Bay. The seller had given it to one of the companies that act as middlemen in handling items to be auctioned on e-Bay for a commission, so I never could get in contact with the real owner of the barrel. In their description of the barrel they said it was owned by a guy that had worked for CVA for years and this barrel was one of only five prototypes made of a .75 cal. smoothbore Mt. Howitzer that they had shelved in favor of a smaller bore rifled version. When I first read this I assumed this was just the hooey you sometimes get on e-Bay descriptions but after a couple messages exchanged with a person at this store I changed my mind. He swore that this was the story the owner had given him and that the man seemed believable. The person I was in contact with knew nothing about calibers so I asked him to take a measurement of the diam. of the bore and he came back with 3/4''. If you look at the photo you can see its a smooth bore and in the bottom right hand pic you can make out the cal and the no. 7,  some other numbers and letters and at the end it looks like the Roman numeral X and a 1. At the time I was convinced the story was true (I still am) but like a jackass I talked myself out of bidding on it because I had never built a field carriage (especially the wheels) and I figured why bother with it. Some time later I was looking at my CVA Napoleon and the idea came to me that the carriage wasn't a replica (even a bad replica) of a Federal field carriage but was a pretty good replica of a no.2 prairie carriage. I always thought something about the carriage just didn't look right. The trail seems too short and the angle down too steep, the breast of the trail between the cheeks looks like the prairie model, it even has the folding trail pole on a pivot that the no.2 prairie has. Theres also something about the Napoleon barrel that doesn't look right, the trunnions are too long especially in the rimbases. I then came up with the idea that maybe the Spanish outfit or CVA had the plans for a prairie carriage all worked out in scale for the .75 cal. Howitzer barrel that was shelved and decided to go ahead and slap a more conventional barrel on it, then market it. I don't know, this theory may be all wet but I've done a good job of convincing myself that it's valid. I'm never going to know without one of those five barrels to mount on the carriage and judge if it fits and looks correct in scale.
                                                               

[copdoc]

I was convinced the story was true (I still am) but like a jackass I talked myself out of bidding on it because

fill in the blank
how many time have we all done that.

Spanish outfit or CVA had the plans for a prairie carriage all worked out in scale for the .75 cal. Howitzer barrel that was shelved and decided to go ahead and slap a more conventional barrel on it, then market it

Sounds like this is right

pretty good replica of a no.2 prairie carriage

you are right It looks darn good.

that they had shelved in favor of a smaller bore rifled version

I wondered why the made a rifled bbl as this is not a taget piece, has no sight, the originals were smooth bore, rifled bbls are harder to clean, etc  I woulder why they decided to change. 

[Cannoneer]

I agree with you on the rifling. If their goal was to make a replica (even a loose replica) and the originals were s/b why make them rifled. Even stranger than the Mt. Howitzer being rifled is the fact that they manufactured a small naval gun in the style of a late 18th century cannon that was 7 1/4'' long with a .45 cal bore and this was also rifled. The .69 Nap. and this naval gun are the only CVA cannons that I own. The only answer I can think of is that they must have thought that the rifling would be a good selling point. Their decision to scrap the .75 Howitzer and go with a smaller cal. is probably due to the fact that the ball ammo in .58 would always be readily available (.58 cal. Fayettville, Cook & Bros., etc., Confederate muskets) and they may have also chose .58 because they already had rifling machinery set up in this cal. for a firearm barrel they produced.
The more I think about that barrel the madder I get at myself for not trying to win it. If it actually would fit well on this carriage it would make a respectable looking replica. To be honest about it, if the .69 cal. Nap. were entered in a scale replica artillery contest it would never walk away with any awards but it is well made and I've had fun with it over the years.
I've been studying the photo of that barrel and it seems to have a lot of steel around the bore. It could be opened up some and and a 3/4'' powder chamber left in the tube, then with some brass plating to finish it off, it would look pretty good.
Well, as some say, for an optimist there's always tomorrow, maybe one of those five barrels will turn up somewhere.
 

[Double D]

Rifled bores.  Simple guys the barrels are made from barrel stock fom other projects.  You check those guns real close you might even find a breech plugs

[GGaskill]

Boom J--

   Do you have any other dimensions of the mountain howitzer barrel (besides the .75 cal.)?

[copdoc]

  Simple guys the barrels are made from barrel stock fom other projects.  You check those guns real close you might even find a breech plugs

The cascable is the breech plug.  I'm sure you are right about the bbls.  They were prob leftovers from a project. It would be real expesive to have a bored solid bbl that is rifled.   It is a pretty heavy bbl, about 1 1/2 " dia. (the rifled one)

I would like to have one really accurate scale model like Capt Ed's 1/7 scale Dahlgren on the recent post or a Mt Howitzer on the CVA carriage like Boom J pictured.  It is a very nice copy of the no.2 prairie carriage.

The bbls are easier to make than the carriages, especially field carriages.  That is why I have not tried tried to make a full scale Mt Howitzer.  There is a Dahlgren boat howitzer on a steel carriage that might be a possibility.           copdoc

[Cannoneer]

I don't have any measurements on the barrel. When I save a photo of a cannon I type a caption and usually do record the dimensions of the barrel. On this one all I have is, prototype Mt. Howitzer .75 cal and it sold for 105.00.                                         






   

[GGaskill]

Scaling just bore size to bore size (16.2%) would give a length of 6" and trunnions of 7/16" diameter.  What is the proportion of the wheel diameter to actual prairie carriage wheel diameter?

[Cannoneer]

George, the wheel diam. is 11.5''. I'll have to google around to try and find the diam. of the wheels on the #2 prairie carriage.

[bpsteve]

The wheels were 42" in diameter

[GGaskill]

So that would make the carriage about 27.38% scale.  The barrel at that scale would be about 10 3/16" long, 2.08" breech ring dia and 1.89" muzzle dia.  Scale bore diameter would be about 1 1/4".

If those pictures in Reply #8 are of the barrel in question, it must be a pretty big barrel.  The muzzle looks to be at least three times the bore diameter, maybe as much as 2.5".  A one third scale barrel would be 2.3" dia at the muzzle, 2.53" at the breech ring and 12.4" long.  How would that size fit with the carriage?