Arsenal rebuild M-1841 42 PDR model

[Double D]

Part of the goal of this rebuild was to rerig the tackle of this gun to deal with horrendous recoil.  This photo gave some clues in how the gun was rigged.



To may eye it looked that this rigging wasn't quite right.  It just seemed to me that the gun would want to flip muzzle up when it slammed against the breech rope.

After rigging I notice the tendency for the breech rope not to stay on the knob.  The cannon has been display at the Ben Franklin store and every time I went in the store rope was off the knob.



So after some thought here's how I laid out the rigging.  Instead of draping the breech rope down behind the shackle and under the cheek and transom fouling the train tackle,  I pulled the slack out and made the rope tight from shackle across the cascabel, letting the slack fall in front of the breech rope shackles and down the side of the cheeks. 



This seemed to work quite well.

[Double D]

Unfortunately another little problem rear it's ugly head.  This gun was built Pre Matt Switliks The More Complete Cannoneer.  In fact it predates the Internet as taught me by AlGore.  Back in the those day I got my guidance  from the the guy down the road and THe Muzzleloading Artilleryman.  The maximum safe load for a cannon was determined by using the formula of 2 oz per inch of cannon grade of FG powder.  875 grains was considered to be the maimum safe load for the one inch bore.  If you look at SWitliks chart now, you will see the maximum safe load now is 185 grains of Cannon Grade.

A 400 grain load was my standard and I never had a problem. This gun hasn't been shot much over the past 15 - 20 years. I have only recently used Switliks chart to build a few loads for noise making with a max load.

Today I built loads of 125 grains.  As you saw in the other post the load is a foil wrapped cartidge.  The cartridge is about 3/4 of an inch long.  Today I loaded the first charge, pricked it and added a quill.  Lit the quill and got smoke a fire. Swabbed the gun and reloaded.  Pricked the charge, felt the vent prick go in the charge or so I thought. Added a quill and lit it and goes a whoosh, the charge didn't fire.  Pulled the quill and waited a while then ran the vent prick in and felt nothing but the bottom of the chamber.  Unloaded the gun and found out the vent was about 3/4 inch up from the bottom of the chamber.  I have had this gun for over 25 years and shot it a lot the first few years and never knew.  Guess I will have to put a bottom wad in the cartridges when I build them.  Darn.

[GGaskill]

Or maybe thread the current vent and loctite a plug in it and drill a new vent.

[Terry C.]

Oops, misread the problem.

[Double D]

I measured the distance between back of breech and vent hole and it is exactly .750, that sounds like a 25 year old math error.  For now I am going to try 1/2 base wads.

If that doesn't work I can always pour zinc in the vent and drill a new hole.  The back of the breech is directly under the rear reinforce. I probably have to put the hole right in front of the reinforce. 

[Double D]

I was repacking cartridges using cardboard base wads.  I had to first open all the other cartridges. I also had the one cartrdige that didn't fire.

Sure wish I was thinking firstwhen I unpacked the misfire. Pictures would have been very interesting.

I tried to fire this charge with a quill.  I pricked the charge through the vent.  I could feel the vent prick go in the charge.  I inserted the quill and lit it with a linstock.  The quill fired with a whoosh. The projectile was wormed out and the charge pulled with a worm.

When I started taking this charge apart I found a clear hole were the vent prick entered the twisted foil of the charge., but it had not penetrated the powder area or bag.

The quill had went down in  the hole and when fired it ruptured the foil at the top of the bag.  When I pulled the plastic bag out, it was punctured from the worm.  The powder along the area of the quill  in the plastic bag was pulverized to powder.  About 10% of the total powder pulverized. The top quarter of the powder was shattered into smaller grains than the FG.

That is interesting in two ways.  You want to be real careful handling these quills so they don't go off in your  hand.

Also is this is how ignition occurs?  A quill explodes and generates a secondary explosion vs a fuse which just ignite the main charge.

[dan610324]

yeah its a pity you didnt photo documented this .
it would have been very interesting to see it .

[GGaskill]

George...it's a different world up here. The Lady at the Ben Franklin want's me to come out to her place over 4th of July and shoot the cannons for her grandkids.  She says it will freak her big city daughter in law out.  Then she got this evil smile on her face and her husband said, she really wants to shoot the cannons herself.

So did you do this?  Get any pix?

[Double D]

George...it's a different world up here. The Lady at the Ben Franklin want's me to come out to her place over 4th of July and shoot the cannons for her grandkids.  She says it will freak her big city daughter in law out.  Then she got this evil smile on her face and her husband said, she really wants to shoot the cannons herself.

So did you do this?  Get any pix?

I think I went to South  Paws for the Fourth that year.  How ever I did loan them a golf ball mortar and some powder last summer when the family came up.  

They didn't shoot up all the powder. They stopped shooting when the fouling built up enough that the golf ball wouldn't go down the bore any more.  I pointed out the swab I sent with the gun and they said they wondered what that was for.  

I am building them there own gun right now.

[GGaskill]

You needed to supply some training in addition to the hardware.

[Double D]

They had training,  I mistook the blank stare for comprehension