How I spent my 4th of July

[Rickk]

This post has been a long time coming... summer has gone by so fast and I am trying to catch up with things...

This past 4th of July, Mike and Tracy from Seacoast Artillery stopped by and demonstrated one of their awesome works of art.

It was threatening to rain, but the rain held off just long enough to do a bit of shooting out back....





After a few hits on a milk jug at 50 yards, I set up a 12" diameter, 3+ foot long log at about 80 yards.

There are two hits in the end of the log, they are touching each other. Accuracy is amazing !

One of the hits exited the log at about 2 feet ...

It then went thru a 4 inch thick tree, and we have no idea where it went after that... probably deep into the hill behind my range

The second projectile I am speculating is at the 3 foot mark, stopped by the knots in the tree at that location. Sometime this week I plan on cutting the first 18 inches off so it will fit in my wood splitter and see if I can find out where it stopped and what the fired projectile looks like.

Stay tuned,

Rick

[Cat Whisperer]

Good to see some familiar faces with that target shooter!

So do Tracy and Mike have a soft-point version for DEER?

[seacoastartillery]

Hi Rick,

     Mike and I sure did enjoy our 4th of July this year thanks to the warm welcome we received in western Mass.  An excellent lunch and marveling at the enthusiasm and energy of your son were the highlights of our 4th.  We were also very pleased to get a look at the carronade carriage before all the hardware was installed.  Gave us some ideas for a half scale Napoleon that a friend gave us.  Even at that stage we knew it would look great when finished and, by golly, it sure does!

     Penetration in hard prairie sod is 8 to 15" depending on previous ground squirrel or prairie dog activity.  We were as surprised as anyone as to the log reaming ability of the 100 Pdr. Parrott.  The  milled base 12L14 bolts we used at your place and in Floyd, VA had the traditional "chill nose" ogive shape.  Mr. experiment, Mike, has already turned some spitzers and now we are looking for logs.   It will be interesting to see where the un-recovered bolt stopped and what it looks like.  Prairie soil usually does nothing except make faint swirls in the ogive area from rotation in the fine sand within the soil.

No, we do not have a soft-point, Tim, but don't rule out a 7 oz. super-penetrator made of hardened D-2 with a bolt-on brass sabot in the future.  On our site you can see that we only went about .700" thru 1.00" boiler plate, SO FAR, that is.   

Thanks again Rick  for a memorable 4th of July,  2007!!

Mike and Tracy

[lance]

hey Rickk, great pics, can't wait to see the 100pd bolt when you get it out of the log. all the rounds they shot here are buried, i might go metal detecting. well, then i have to dig holes, too hot for that.

[Rickk]

I dug it out last night, taking pictures as I did the autopsy.

I will try to post them tonight. The results will be surprising...stay tuned !

[Rickk]

and so the autopsy (technically, "necropsy", but only Copdoc and I probably know the difference?) continues...

I cut some off, and split the rest to find the "wound channel"

Looks like at 29 inches it hit a knot and stopped

The amazing part is that, except for a bit of rust caused by sitting in a chunk of firewood for 2 months the projectile is undamaged

The only scratches I find on it are the rifling engraved grooves in the skirt. Every other part of the projectile is sharp and undamaged. I will add it to the unfired twin projectile in my son's collection 

[lance]

very impressive, great pics too Rickk, i'll have to ask CopDoc what that word means. well now that you got that one out, i sure would like to dig up the ones down here. would probably be a full day with the metal detector and shovel...........just wondering how they held up against dirt and rocks.

[seacoastartillery]

     Thank's for digging that bolt out, Rick.  Mike and I are very surprised that the skirt wasn't deformed; we thought it might have turned sideways at one of those knots, crushing the skirt which is only .020" thick.  We are pretty sure you didn't find any black powder residue on that bullet after it burrowed in that far.  Surprising is the fact that you always do, when you smack a steel plate target.  In fact, you can count the rifling grooves by looking at the ogive of the bullet.  The 100 Pdr. Parrott tube leaves nine distinct smut marks on the ogive which indicates blow-by gasses which pass along the bolt before full skirt engagement into the rifling.  Your pictures are very nice and clear.
      Almost forgot, thanks for raising such well-behaved LLamas!  They neither bit nor spit; I guess we must have passed the smell-test.  Maybe the smell of blackpowder has a calming effect on them??

Best Regards,

Tracy and Mike

[copdoc]

Impressive results and that is a fantastically detailed cannon.  I have admired them on your website.  I understand you replicated the land and grove width to scale and replicated the progressive twist.  Did you going to use a driving band on the projectiles?  Can I have a fired projectile for my  forensic reference collection just in case someone goes postal with one?  Maybe you better send the gun also, just in case.  Well if I just said I wanted it for myself you would not send one would you.

That really is a fantastically detailed piece.  This is one where you really need the powder can to tell the scale.

Oh, necropsy means taking apart anything dead, autopsy is taking apart a person.  I have had to do both but had not thought about the meaning since I was assigned a fox murder case. I guess it was a good thing I went to medical school after that. 

[seacoastartillery]

     Yes, they are scaled to the original 1:6 in every detail, even the rifling.  One logical reason for doing this, even though you may not have any notion to sell one to a museum, is that all of the engineering and function testing was done successfully over 140 years ago.  Although some things do not translate perfectly when you reduce or enlarge an original gun, we have found that the gun functions just like the original did!  Recoil is a little stout, but we bring it under control with 100 pounds of barbell weights hung under our cannon shooting bench.

     We use one of the precursors of the driving band, a sabot, or, more correctly, in our case, a milled base, 12L14 steel, solid bullet or bolt.  Actually we borrowed this idea from Commander John M. Brooke, CSN who used this simple type of expanding skirt successfully in full-size 6.4 inch and 7 inch bolts and shells for his powerful seacoast rifles.  Thanks for your kind comments about our 100 Pdr. Parrott Rifle.  Other than the riveting, we had a lot of enjoyment building this piece.   Almost as big as a guitar, and weighing 90 lbs., we don't think it would be the first choice of any perp with even a little gray matter upstairs!  If we ever get an extra fired bolt, we will send you one.  Actually, you just gave me a great idea; one day soon, when the temperature on the prairie gets out of the 90s, we will lug the old metal detector up to the face of our backstop hill, a 60 footer at about 1,200 yards from the shooting bench.  That would be some fun and might yield a few of the 160 logged shots which have gone in that direction!

     
Regards,

Mike and Tracy

[copdoc]

We use the precursor of the driving band called a sabot

Of course.  Sorry I was taken by the detail of your piece and was not thinking. I have thought about the powder can thing and I think it would be interesting to post the pics without the powder can first and see if who can guess the size.  I have heard that riveting something like this or a Browning machine gun receiver can be quite difficult, if you want to get it right.  Some of the C3 builders put the rivets in and TIG them from the back.  That would not fit with the quality of your work.

Thanks and if you ever find an extra 1/6 scale Parrott  gun feel free to send it also.  Now I wish I was a brain surgeon, instead of a police surgeon.