Dahlgren barrels

[Frank46]

How about Dom's golfball dalgren kept the same size but made for 1" balls?. Just a suggestion. Frank

[little seacoast]

HI Frank, Unfortunately Dom tells me he is no longer setup to produce cannon of that length.  New shop and smaller lathe makes it very dificult. Thanks for the suggestion though.

[dominick]

HI Frank, Unfortunately Dom tells me he is no longer setup to produce cannon of that length.  New shop and smaller lathe makes it very dificult. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I would have to have another shop machine the barrel and that could be very expensive.  I've been that route before with the large thundermugs.  I machined a few on my own.  Then a local shop with a 4 axis machining center quoted a reasonable price.  When I went to pick up the second batch, the price was almost double.    My new shop is small so I have small equipment. 

                                       Old Lathe




                                       New Lathe    [Machining a soda can mortar barrel]

[GGaskill]

Your new shop must be smaller than small; I would have found a way to keep the old lathe.

[Frank46]

Dom, darn, darn, darn. Just when I thought I could get a decent sized dalgren for 1" balls and now I take a hit in the engine room. Always liked the shape of the barrel. Something so massive and functional. Frank

[dominick]

Dom, darn, darn, darn. Just when I thought I could get a decent sized dalgren for 1" balls and now I take a hit in the engine room. Always liked the shape of the barrel. Something so massive and functional. Frank

Frank,  I'm still learning the capacity of this lathe. It cuts larger material than it looks like it would only it does it slower. I already build 5 soda mortar barrels on it .  I made a steady rest for longer barrels and I'll be trying a larger Dahlgren barrel sometime in the future.  I have the material here for one.  A 1/6 scale, 4" diameter x 1.75" bore breech Dahlgren barrel is 17.5" long which is the size of the golf ball barrels I built in the past. A 3" diameter breech x 1" bore Dahlgren barrel would be about 13" long.  I think this is very possible with my current setup.  Dom

[dominick]

Your new shop must be smaller than small; I would have found a way to keep the old lathe.

George,  I tried that, but I had no where to go with it other than to put it in.  I costs me every time I needed to move it.

[little seacoast]

Hoorah! Hope lives on for a Dom 1.75!

[Frank46]

Dom, if you ever do one of your 1/6 scale dalgrens and can do a 1" bore you would make me one happy camper. Or even in .75 caliber. I always liked your dalgrens but never had the money. But will definitely find a way to pay for it. You may be wondering why the smaller bores. Easier to find a mold that won't break the bank and wheel weights are getting hard to find down here.
Frank

[seacoastartillery]

I was watching an older cast Dahlgren barrel on an auction site that suddenly vanished 24 hrs early.  Does anyone know if a 20" or so reproduction Dahlgren is being made by a current manufacturer?  I really like the look and a barbette carriage mount would be nice to build.

      Little Seacoast,  Mike and I were wandering around Old Fort Jackson, a 2nd System Fort on the Savannah River, about 15 miles east of Savannah, Georgia in 2005, when we spotted a 9" Dahlgren Shell Gun mounted on the Barbette carriage shown below.  There are no dimensioned drawings available for these anywhere, but you can do a good job from old photos that are on the web.  Personally, we think this shape would look odd or even silly on one of those Front Pintle Barbette carriages such as Zulu made recently, even though we like that style of carriage very much.  It's quite a bit heavier  (9,200 Lbs.) than the typical, 32 pdr. (7,400 Lbs.) and much more massive looking.  In our opinion, it needs to be mounted lower and on a more massive carriage.

What do you think?

Mike and Tracy

Wooden Seacoast Center-Pintle Barbette Carriage and 9" Dahlgren Shell Gun on the Terraplein facing east north east along the river.




Another view.  This gun is occasionally fired with a substantial 5 Lb. powder charge.  Would love to see that!  Note muzzle damage.




This fort and also Fort McAllister which is about 15 miles south of Fort Jackson on the Ogeechee River, have excellent 'ordinance stores' rooms with interesting replicas of the tools used to load and handle the various sized shells used with the fort's guns.  That funnel would have been made of copper or tin, non-sparking metals, and would not show any rust like is seen here.  Sabot?  Lathe not available, but the collection of original projectiles, on racks nearby, is very nice.

[little seacoast]

Love the look, were many or most heavy Dahlgrens mounted this way?  By the way, what Dahlgren is SBR's gun modeled on or is the any particular one?  That barrel would look odd if it were sitting on a higher mount.  Maybe now I can make one of these as well as a front pintle for my Parrott.  It just keeps getting better!  I will be in the Savanah area this fall and will visit the forts with camera, notebook, and tape measure in hand. Best Regards, LS
PS bought that SBR barrel this morning for a friend, maybe he'll let me play with it some while I wait for my dream GB gun.

[Double D]

The carriages and mounts of these guns are painted, is that a correct detail?

[Zulu]

I was watching an older cast Dahlgren barrel on an auction site that suddenly vanished 24 hrs early.  Does anyone know if a 20" or so reproduction Dahlgren is being made by a current manufacturer?  I really like the look and a barbette carriage mount would be nice to build.

      Little Seacoast,  Mike and I were wandering around Old Fort Jackson, a 2nd System Fort on the Savannah River, about 15 miles east of Savannah, Georgia in 2005, when we spotted a 9" Dahlgren Shell Gun mounted on the Barbette carriage shown below.  There are no dimensioned drawings available for these anywhere, but you can do a good job from old photos that are on the web.  Personally, we think this shape would look odd or even silly on one of those Front Pintle Barbette carriages such as Zulu made recently, even though we like that style of carriage very much.  It's quite a bit heavier  (9,200 Lbs.) than the typical, 32 pdr. (7,400 Lbs.) and much more massive looking.  In our opinion, it needs to be mounted lower and on a more massive carriage.

What do you think?

Mike and Tracy

Wooden Seacoast Center-Pintle Barbette Carriage and 9" Dahlgren Shell Gun on the Terraplein facing east north east along the river.




Another view.  This gun is occasionally fired with a substantial 5 Lb. powder charge.  Would love to see that!  Note muzzle damage.




This fort and also Fort McAllister which is about 15 miles south of Fort Jackson on the Ogeechee River, have excellent 'ordinance stores' rooms with interesting replicas of the tools used to load and handle the various sized shells used with the fort's guns.  That funnel would have been made of copper or tin, non-sparking metals, and would not show any rust like is seen here.  Sabot?  Lathe not available, but the collection of original projectiles, on racks nearby, is very nice.

That is a really neat carriage!
I need more room in my house.
Zulu

[seacoastartillery]

Love the look, were many or most heavy Dahlgrens mounted this way?  By the way, what Dahlgren is SBR's gun modeled on or is the any particular one?  That barrel would look odd if it were sitting on a higher mount.  Maybe now I can make one of these as well as a front pintle for my Parrott.  It just keeps getting better!  I will be in the Savanah area this fall and will visit the forts with camera, notebook, and tape measure in hand. Best Regards, LS
PS bought that SBR barrel this morning for a friend, maybe he'll let me play with it some while I wait for my dream GB gun.

     Most were not mounted this way, although the 9" Dahlgren was so highly regarded, it is almost certain that a few were.  The vast majority were on 4 Truck or Marsilly Naval Carriages onboard ships.  The terrestrial mounts were probably as varied as the forts that mounted them.  From our reading, we can only prove that there were five guns mounted on land during the war, four 9" Dahlgrens in a Federal battery which bombarded Port Huron, Louisiana during the Vicksburg Campaign and one 11" Dahlgren mounted on a ship's pivot carriage with platform in Federal, Fort Putnam, formerly Confederate, Battery Gregg on Morris Island, South Carolina about a mile south east of Confederate held Fort Sumter.  See the wartime photo below.

     I believe the SBR Gun is based on the 9" Dahlgren Shell Gun, but there is very little difference between the 9 and the 11 Inch, just size.
When you are in Savannah, GA you should plan on visiting at least two forts, Old Fort Jackson and Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island near the center of the Savannah River, not far from the river's mouth and Tybee Island where the Federal Breeching Batteries were in 1862.  The fort still shows extensive damage to it's curtain walls from that battle almost 150 years ago.  In Savannah, be sure to visit the main office of the Savannah School of Art and Design; it's in an old sandstone armory building with the coolest entrance you will ever see.  Two huge, 24 Pdr. seacoast guns from the late 1700s flank the entrance, each with beautiful, raised relief, American eagles!  Bonus....Several CW guns are in a square about 70 feet away.  Have fun and take lots of pics.

Tracy and Mike

Fort Putnam gun.




Although designed for 8 or 10 Inch Rodman Guns, this Iron, Front-Pintle, Seacoast, Barbette Carriage could easily handle the 9 or 11 Inch Dahlgren Shell Guns with a long Elevation Screw and handle and an iron carriage transom plate upon which it will bear.

[little seacoast]

Been to FT Pulaski several times, very cool place.  The wife is from SC so we tend to vacation @ the beach there.  The barrel on the Battery with the shaved muzzle, from a sunken Union ironclad? 

[seacoastartillery]

    

Been to FT Pulaski several times, very cool place.  The wife is from SC so we tend to vacation @ the beach there.  The barrel on the Battery with the shaved muzzle, from a sunken Union ironclad?  

     Yes it is and the whole story of the Ironclad attack of April 1862 and the double turret, ironclad, Keokuk sinking the next day off Morris Island is easily found on the internet as is the story of the succsessful Confederate salvage of the two 11" Dahlgren Shell Guns under the noses of the Federal Blockading fleet.  The part of the story very, very few people know, is the one which tells the tale of what happened to these two guns after the salvage.  First, they were transported away from the sinking site by two of the three Confederate Ironclads charged with the protection of Charleston's inner Harbor, the Palmetto State and the Chicora.  The ironclad, Charleston remained near the city.

"The salvage was worth the agony, the twin Dahlgrens became the most powerful guns in Charleston.  One was mounted at Fort Sumter for a while where it lived until August and was at one point the only serviceable cannon in the fort. It was then moved to Battery Ramsey at the eastern end of White Point Gardens in the City. It was either destroyed somehow or sold as scrap after the evacuation of Charleston.  The other Dahlgren was mounted at Battery Bee on Sullivan’s Island and was used to guard the harbor until the evacuation. Amazingly, it was abandoned by the Confederates and of no concern to the Yankees until one day the cannon and its carriage overturned and was buried by the sand near the beach. In 1898 it was found by troops stationed at Fort Moultrie and a year later it was mounted on The Battery where it can be seen at the corner of East Bay and South Battery." Charleston's Ironclads is the source here, however we have been unable to find this info from any other source.  

    Also, if you look at the picture of the Keokuk 11" Dahlgren we posted earlier today, you can see it lies partially over the former, wartime location of one of the huge 12.75" Blakely Rifles which fired those humongous 600 Lb. flanged bolts.  In fact, the third house in the row behind the house on the corner, is where a huge piece of the giant gun's breech landed, (it tore through the roof and lodged in the attic), after it was blown up along with it's sister gun, just before the city was evacuated.

Tracy and Mike

[Double D]

and the paint?

[seacoastartillery]

and the paint?

      Now there is a conversation stopper.  Double D,  Cryptic comments which are to the point and easily understood are good to use for emphasis.  Paint for what, pray tell?

Tracy and Mike

[Double D]

and the paint?

      Now there is a conversation stopper.  Double D,  Cryptic comments which are to the point and easily understood are good to use for emphasis.  Paint for what, pray tell?

Tracy and Mike

Not Cryptic at all, over looked perhaps

The carriages and mounts of these guns are painted, is that a correct detail?

[seacoastartillery]

     Oh, right you are; they certainly were.  We are not qualified paint people, but it is an important detail and we are betting on some shade of O.D. was used on the big ones just as it was on the field guns.  Maybe someone knows for sure.

T&M

[Double D]

Was paint used only for garrison purposes or wartime also. Did the CW carriages get painted during the war or after.  With the old B/W pictures it's hard to tell if the carriages were painted our not. 

[Cannoneer]

The Federal carriages were painted, as were the CSA's if the paint was available.

[Frank46]

Mike & Tracey, thanks for the pic of the fort putnam dalgren. If Dom ever makes the larger dalgren like he used to (hint,hint) that would be the perfect carriage for it. Only would make one change and that would to put wheels front and back like a naval carriage. Shoot and scoot. Frank

[JeffG]

If Dom does go back into larger Dahlgrens, I'm in....again.