It looks great. Will you be turning the forward band on it near the muzzle, and funneling the muzzle? Could you give the eternally curious people like Mike and I an idea why the vent seems to be a bit forward of the expected location? Calibre? Major O.D.?
Thanks,
Tracy and Mike
To the first two questions, the answers are "No" and "No" !
The vent is one inch forward of where you'd expect because the engineers couldn't bore this out any deeper than 8.5 inches. They haven't got a machine capable of it. So the length of solid metal behind the end of the boring is an astonishing 3 inches. The cascable section is welded on. We messed up with the original design; I planned for a cascable built up from seperate thick washers, welded together, with a ball welded on the end (from within the hole of the smallest washer). In order to make the first stage of the barrel, they cut off my piece from a longer piece of material. They did this before I showed them my cascable design....... When I finally did, they said it would be easier and look better, if they turned the cascable from another piece of material and welded it on. Of course, it just happened to be the bit they'd cut off in the first place ! - I did want plenty of mass behind the bore so the balance point would allow me to position the trunnions quite far back from the muzzle, which this cascable piece gives me.
Going back to the matter of the muzzle, I wanted a clean and wide and flat face to the muzzle end. This barrel was my own design. Having followed traditional shapes on all the previous creations, I decided that for this one, I'd create my own shape with a truly massive wall and breech thickness.
I have a couple of alternative mountings in mind - On a timber mounting with lifting handles, this could be used in a mortar mode........ mounted upon a naval-type carriage, it would serve as a carronade.
It can be swapped from one to the other, according to the type of deployment needed at the time.