Pic Of English Cannon

[Xflash]

My wife was in England last month, and took these picture.
I thought it had strange wheels.

[cannonmn]

Thanks for posting.  That carriage would never take the viscious recoil of that piece.   That model of Egyptian rifle takes studded Bieulieu shells, 3.4-inch bore diameter, six deep grooves.  We have a pair of them here but have never mounted them to fire (not yet anyway.)  I'm pretty sure that rifled howitzer would have had a steel carriage.

[RocklockI]

that is a strange one !

it looks like a poly barrel . i think it has strange wheels too !
gary

[Double D]

That's probably the carriage made by the Dervish Army and I'll bet they fired it too! The Deverish were not exactly a sophisticated military organization

[KABAR2]

That's probably the carriage made by the Dervish Army and I'll bet they fired it too! The Deverish were not exactly a sophisticated military organization

Well it's hard to be a good craftsman when you are whirling all the time...........


What I find interesting is where the heck did they find a tree to make the wheels out of? I wouldn't think they had many large diameter trees
in that part of the world......

[Double D]

The southern portion of Sudan is tropical.

[dan610324]

its amazing to see the proportions of the wheels ,
they are very close to the proportions we are used to see
the "hubs" got approximately a "normal" length from end to end
the only difference between thoose wheels and ours is that they forgot to add the space between the spokes   

[Victor3]

That's probably the carriage made by the Dervish Army and I'll bet they fired it too! The Deverish were not exactly a sophisticated military organization

Well it's hard to be a good craftsman when you are whirling all the time...........

 Whirling is a type of machining operation, and the outside profile of a cannon barrel could be done with it.  Maybe the method was invented by a Dervish fellow 

[Cannoneer]

We have a pair of them here but have never mounted them to fire (not yet anyway.)  I'm pretty sure that rifled howitzer would have had a steel carriage.

Its hard to gauge because of the foreshortened view of the gun, but it appears to be a short tube. What would be the approx. length of one of these barrels?

[cannonmn]

I'll go measure one.  This same pattern of rifled howitzer was very popular in the late 19th C.  I have examples made by Spain, Egypt, and China, but I've seen the same model with Swiss and many other national markings.

[cannonmn]

Measurements from an Egyptian tube, dated 1864 as I recall (in the typical Islamic calendar system.)

Nominal length:  32 in. (from muzzle face to top rear edge of basering, does not include cascabel)
Muzzle OD:  6 in.
Breech OD:  6.8 in.
Trunnion diameter:  2.68 in.
Trunnion length:  2.34 in.
Length over trunnions:  11.62 in.
Length over rimbases:  6.91 in.

The Egyptian tube isn't in a photogenic setting now, but I think I already have some pix of the Chinese one, which has same profile, bore, rifling, etc.

[cannonmn]

The first three pix show an original carriage for one of these mountain rifles in a museum in Spain.  The last pic is an original Spanish tube on a repro carriage, blonging to a friend.

All the tubes from all countries which used this mountain rifle had the exact same profile.  I wonder if basically one foundry was casting 'em up then engraving the national symbol of any country which wanted to buy them?

[cannonmn]

Pix of the Chinese mountain rifle; the only other example of this I know of is in the Chinese Military Museum in Beijing.  I asked a Chinese scholar to translate the characters on it, and what he found was pretty interesting.  The tube was cast under the supervision of a fairly famous guy who reformed the Chinese military around 1860.  He had such a high rank it was forbidden to write his actual name, but just something that indicated his office.  I've got it all saved, somewhere.  Unfortunately the arms merchant who owned this before me was a brass/bronze polishing fanatic.  I've seen pix of it before he got it to his polishing monkeys, beautiful dark brown patina.

[Cannoneer]

Xflash,

Thanks for starting this thread with your wifes photo of the Egyptian cannon; welcome to the forum.

 

Thanks for the specs, and series of pics, Cannonmn. Then these identical versions of mountain rifles were close in size to our earlier designed smoothbore mt. howitzer.
I enjoyed looking at the Spanish carriage, it seems similar to the first model prairie carriage, except the trail looks thicker, and sturdier where the step-down occurs, which is where the 1st model was prone to cracking. I was also surprised that the wheels only have ten spokes.
These mt. rifles are handsome cannons, its a shame that the previous owner of the Chinese cannon had it polished to that extent, although it does look pretty.

Added 10/2/09: Were the hole for the rimbase dispart sight, and rear breech face sight mount added at a later date on the Chinese cannon?

[cannonmn]

Added 10/2/09: Were the hole for the rimbase dispart sight, and rear breech face sight mount added at a later date on the Chinese cannon?

The rear sight mount was certainly added separately from the original casting, the metal is a different alloy, more yellow.  The sight mount has probably been there since before it was captured from the Chinese (1900?) but as to how long before, I have no idea.  The British captors would have had no reason to make any changes to it, all they did was collect and display it.  It wound up in the collection of Mr. R. Dimely (sp?) who ran Bapty's, a Brit movie prop company.  Val Forgett Jr. bought Dimely's collection (about 14 bronze cannons) ca. 1998, and re-sold it piece by piece.