We think GGaskill and Rickk are correct; the long chassis could allow the upper carriage's return to battery to abruptly Stop, allowing a shell to start as the gunner is preparing to fire the full size 24 Pdr. Siege & Garrison Howitzer M1844. They probably were cautious to prevent this, and used canister 90% of the time, and Rickk is certainly right about Grade 5 bolts, they make excellent small cannon stock.
Mike and I, like Carronader and Cat Whisperer, like to see the doers, doing, once in a while. We are very pleased that so many have chosen to give it a try and look forward to seeing a little smoke and fire coming from these Lilliputian Cannons. Rifleshooter2, thanks for all those neat in-process pics and movies too!! You built a great looking Bombard in record time!
The pics below show what I have done so far on the Nano-howitzer. Most of the stock has been filed away and muzzle details will hopefully appear Monday night and cascable details on Tuesday.
I keep looking at my photo of that carriage and thinking, 'why did I pick THAT one?' Heck, I think maybe I'll have to build a portion of a flank casemate wall to keep my cannon from looking silly!
Tracy and Mike
P.S. DD is correct, we did have to cancel Christmas bonuses in 2007 after we sent that original, big bucks, Kewpie Doll to him in South Africa. He won the first of our, What is it? Where is it? contests, and that one was not easy, as I recall.
We use a large file to remove material which takes us down to the next smaller dia. feature. The feature gets the smoothing file treatment and a little 240 and 320 grit sandpaper polishing. Then we go down to the next smaller feature, etc.
As the features get closer together, we go to smaller files. Files are inexpensive and more variety is certainly better.
This is what an unaltered file looks like as it gets pretty close to the step between the First Reinforce taper and the Base Ring. A moment of inattention here and you could easily erase a portion of the Base Ring, pushing the step back to the wrong position and making the Base Ring too skinny.
This is what a "Safe Edge File" looks like as it is correctly used in the same situation. The file's right edge teeth have been removed by stoning or grinding, producing a "Safe Edge", or one that will not cut sideways. This file is being used to form the First Reinforce taper without worrying about removing metal from the previously formed, Base Ring on the right side.
