I would love to see Lord Palmerston's Pacificator in person some day! Mallet's huge mortar impressed me so much, that in 2007 I convinced myself and Mike to make one in 1:20 scale as a special project. Mike and I dubbed it, Mallet's Mortar Junior and bored it to 1.700" Dia. to shoot golf balls. 16 grs. of FFg Goex will boost one out to 100 yards and 33 grs. will do the same for a steel FOX ball. We learned a bit about it's history first, before making it.
Mallet’s monster mortar, built for the Crimean War, 1853 to 1856 was designed by Robert Mallet for the primary purpose of crushing masonry arches in fortifications and the thick, rammed-earth coverings, which protected powder magazines in field fortifications with its huge, 36” shells weighing from 2,400 to 2,900 Lbs. Designed to be ship and rail transportable, it was composed of 6 major sections, the heaviest weighing 11 tons. Even the tube was divided into sections! These sections which were designed to be gas-tight upon firing. The large breech-piece containing the powder chamber was a huge, wrought-iron, forging for maximum strength. It was not finished until the war was over, and was finally tested at Woolwich, outside London in 1857.
One observer of the Woolwich ordinance tests remarked that the impact of the 2,400 Lb. “blind shell”, (shell without explosive), was shocking, and that there was a 'great disturbance' at a mile and a half as cartloads of dirt and rock were ejected from a large hole, eighteen feet deep, in hard, dry, soil.
Mike and Tracy
The drawings and tube detail of Mallet's Mortar Junior.
Functional in all respects, our scale re-creation of Mallet's Mortar is fun to shoot and doesn't require a freight train for delivery to the range.
