Hello guys,
thanks very much for the warm welcome to the guild of BP mortar (and soon) cannon builders.
I have been watching this forum closely for some time, before I became member in 2005.
Until late this summer I didn't own a lathe, so my very first model of a mortar was done by using a drill press and some files. This one was caliber .177" (4.5mm) and out of scale in some dimensions, since I just had some bad pictures as reference back then. Later I bought the re-published drawings from Don and Jan Lutz of the civil war Coehorn mortar.
I really like the design of it: everything just fits.
My first model with the new lathe was the cal. .45 mortar you see on the 3rd picture besides the "pico-mortar".
(Actually I missed the topic, where you defined the "official unofficial scaling guidelines"...)
I tried to come closest to scale with my limited experiences on a lathe. But for a start, I think it's quite OK.
Now some background on the 3mm-mortar:
I bought the lathe with a display for the coordinates (no clue what the proper English term might be). By the time I finished the cal. .45 mortar I learned it to be a fine gadget. While I already did the BB-size model I wanted to see, if I could minimize it even further. In search for an easily available source for projectiles (I didn't consider casting for a single second), I noticed that within a shotgun shell there's plenty of them in quite uniform diameter...
The touchhole actually has two diameters: It is .5 of a millimeter all the way through (to retain some pressure (
!) in the chamber) and on the outside it's 1mm for the fuze. That's the only detail on this thing that isn't in scale. I even used the 6 degree taper at the chamber area. The trunnion is also late turned and silver soldered in place.
Actually I need to make my own quick match for it: since even the smallest commercial fuzes are just to big for this thing. I'll be using a very fine granulation of BP used for priming flint-lock muzzle-loaders. It is basically dust. I'll post some pictures when I'm done with the mortar bed.
Thanks for the suggestions for the screws but the eye glasses replacement screws are much too big and I doubt that the micromark ones are in scale to this project. I guess I'll just make them by myself. BTW: I'm living between the city of Duesseldorf and the Dutch border.
I will post the drawings here soon but I doubt that I'll contact "Ripley's".
Best!
Jorg