Apacheforge

I remember the 1970s series “All Creatures Great and Small” About a country vet in 1930s Northern England. In several episodes the actor was shown with his bare arm shoulder deep in the south end of a north facing cow, with no glove at all. Big Ewww.

...if: you pull out clinker and soot when you clean your ears...

I had a recliner once. Don’t know who got the most use out of it. Seemed the moment i found time to set in it and git my feet up, the wife of that era would just remember something that needed doing right now ! Come back and find either the cats or the dog, or all cozied up on it. Obviously no good to me. I think the sight of me relaxing just annoyed that wife so much she just had to come up with something to keep me out of it. I lived just on the outskirts of Prescott Arizona at the time. I hauled it out to the woods and built a blind around it and used it for bagging squirrels, rabbits and doves with an old Stevens .22 short using bb caps. Cheese unt krakers on a raft! Was i ever that young! Hard to believe that was nearly 50 years ago!

That cannon is in fact a US army breech loading mortar from 1900. As for barrel availability, in the 1970s through to 1990s demiled artillery was an easy find at scrapyards near military bases and army surplus stores. Mostly obsolete AA barrels in 40mm, but other stuff too. All mostly ww2 and Korean war scrap. I had a eight foot long section of 3 inch ordnance rifle barrel that i was making into a full scale civil war Whitworth gun. I traded an old Springfield 03-A3 for it. These days, i see 20mm vulcan barrels and not much else. Its mostly because missiles and rockets have replaced most artillery.

So now. The trunnions are now in place. The receiver to barrel is a shrink fit, so i heated the receiver to 400 degrees F and checked the id until it read .005 over the barrel’s od. Picked it up by the trunnions and it slid onto the barrel and seated perfectly. The barrel was stepped and the receiver turned to match, so when fitted, locked into place.

The gun has been tested in a oak deck-carriage with a two pound powder charge and a ten pound steel projectile. Fired into a hill a thousand yards away. We located the impact hole but never recovered the projectile. Free recoil was about 15 feet. What i call Fun-loads involve a soup can filled with concrete with a wooden plug at the can’s opening. This is now the base of the projectile. At ignition the plug is forced deeper into the can, which expands the rim to engage the rifling. Uses about 5 oz. of powder. At 300 yard targets, its fairly accurate. And recoil is only 24 inches. On the pivot mount, the gun’s mass and the restraining tackle, along with the coil spring, handles the recoil easily. The barrel is a cut off section of a naval 3in.- 50 deck gun. The breech is a nickel steel alloy and they screwed together on a 4tpi whitworth thread. I built the barrel 25 years ago, but built the mount just nine months ago.

Here is my 3 inch rifled howitzer on a pivot mount. I have a coastal battery of six artillery pieces that overlooks a tiny harbor here on Puget Sound. Too much fun. There is a gun range 50 miles from me, but there is a lot of public land between here and there, so i use public land.

Here is the receiver being set up for locating the trunnions. Counter bores were added and the trunnions had a stub turned at the base to fit the counter bore. I then Tig welded them in place with nice big and deep filets. I then bored and turned some solid 4130 bar into collars that will be coped for a nice fit and then welded in place.

A few friends of mine have purchased little Krupp 50mm pack howitzers that were found in a warehouse in Thailand. Cute and deadly from around 1900. At the time my friends bought them, those guns sold for $25,000. Now you can expect to pay $75,000. Heres a pic.

About 6 years ago i was outfitting my 120 year old sailing ship with a selection of tools to repair the old girl while cruising. Part of the outfit included a small gas forge and was on the lookout for an anvil, when, glory be! I found one at a flea market. A Trenton 120# for sixty xxxxxxx dollars!! its been in storage for 3 years and i retrieved it last year. I had some stubs of black locust, about 6x8x19 inches and lag bolted them together for a nice stump. I have blocks of black locust holding the anvil to the stump. No chain or staples needed. That anvil does not bounce or move.

When i was a very young adult i opened my first retail jewelry store/ manufactory. Selling my own custom design work and carrying some other artists hand made silver jewelry. I also had a job shop in the back with a couple of benchworkers cranking out silver jewelry that i was wholesaling. Eventually i began taking in repair work. This shop was located in a very well off to wealthy area, so it was common to have silverware heirlooms brought to me. It was common to get a phone call and be asked as you have done...” its broken, can you fix it?” I needed more information than a phone conversation could provide, i needed to see it. How it was made originally has to be determined and if it is fabricated or cast, or if it is filled or hollow or solid. Also old silver candelabra were often filled with a paste very high in arsenic.... in those days i turned quite a few of these jobs down, however with these new laser welding machines in the jewelry trades, i think such delicate repairs are possible. So find a shop that has a laser welder and you might be successful.

This is my 1945 Sheldon lathe 11x36. I had to rebuild the qc train, and now runs fine. I designed a horizontal boring system for drilling bores in some solid cast iron cannon barrels i had laying around the shop.

There have been examples cited for just such a spring. Looking at my system, i can see how such a spring can be fitted. I think a greater horse power of motor will be needed to push against the added load. Experimentation will proceed.

I found that the rpm of the cam was too high so after some calculations came up with a pulley combination that gave me about 80 strokes a minute. The cam was made from two inch thick sections of fir sandwiched between plywood. I notice friction wear was occurring and added a 2 inch wide strip of heavy gauge sheet brass as a bearing surface. While yes, i could have built a much refined version, i just wanted to bodger up a machine from material laying around my boatshed. Built mostly for fun as i really don’t have a need for this to make a living. It is a fun toy to make other fun toys.

This is a shop built variation of the Da Vinci cam hammer. Its been about 18 years since my full time blacksmithing/fabricator days, and 17 years since i gave it all up to sail and live on a 30ft. boat. Four years back i settled in Western Washington. Bought a nice isolated little home with a nice shop space. Built a nice little woodshop/machineshop/ weldshop. Decided to add a smithy with a tiny trip hammer. I saw some on youtube and came up with my version. The posts are black locust 6x8 and the pillowblocks are lignum vitae. Its got a 20 hammer and the anvil can be changed out for dies. While i can hand forge certain things faster, for drawing out and planishing this is great.

Now would not be a time to share the story of the croquet ball and sewer pipe cannon from when i was ten. However, at almost 70 i still have all my fingers, most of my teeth and some of my hearing. Give me the wind, and a ship and something to sink it with...

The barrel is from a de-mil anti-aircraft gun. And the other parts are from heat treated 4140 alloy steel. I designed this to withstand smokeless powder pressures but will only run pyrodex powder, which is a low pressure propellant made to be used in blackpowder guns. the receiver and chambers are machined from solid bar stock. I have made cannons using high pressure seamless tube before and have 20 years of regular shooting with them, but in this instance i prefer starting off with solid stock.

Hey Frosty! yes the cannon would be legal, as it is based on unfixed ammo, and those types that used cartridge base ammo are legal here in Washington after a destructive device permit is gotten, plus a tax stamp from the ATF. Anyway i have started the process for the full scale version.

I have been a metals craftsman for 53 years. From fine jewelry to tunnel boring machines. Along the way enjoyed building a variety of scale historic cannon. Recently i have created a table top scale Puckle Gun. A repeating cannon invented by James Puckle in 1718. It is a functioning concept model with the idea of building a 40mm rifled version.

And this all started with a bird sculpture? i’m in!

Me and the dawgs.

I have worked in many of the metal crafts trades and have used a selection of torches. As a native American silversmith i used the Presto-lite acetylene air mix torch usually found in the refrigeration trades. Could handle most soldering or brazing jobs. Don’t know if they still make them. When i switched to fine jewelry work with gold and platinum i used a henrob oxy- natural gas torch and loved it. In another production shop i worked for we used the Mini-torch. That one is just like a full size oxy-acetylene torch but the handle with a tip is only about 5 inches long. Amazing temperature control. Except for the largest tip, the other tips have ruby liners. I remember the demo for this: the sales tech butt welded two tiny steel wires together, within a recessed filter paper of a cigarette without burning the paper. 40 years later i still use one. Stay away from chinese imitations. Those may look like a Mini-torch but they are a walking talking fire hazard. I live in the woods, 50 miles from any weld shop so gasses are precious so i get the largest bottles i can lift into my truck. Also times being what they are i am looking into buying a water torch which generates its own gas. Just needs 120v and distilled water. Both commodities i have in abundance. All the best!

As a young man I worked as a silversmith and in the shop I worked in we used Prestolite acetylene air mix torches. Handpiece to hose, to regulator, to tank. Sweet. Then worked in a hippy jewelry shop that used those handheld tank, propane torches for silver soldering. Gads! How I hated those things! Clumsy heavy and only good for peeling paint. I found a craft supplier that carried a handpiece torch with a selection of tips and a 6 foot hose that mounted to those disposable tanks. I would tape that tank to my bench leg and work all day without near the fatigue hefting that portable torch would cause. I was just getting fussy, I guess as I remember having to use one of those gasoline torches regularly once upon a time. Man jumps from an airplane has problems with his parachute and is fumbling with it. As he falls, a man passes him going up. He hollers to the man, “know anything about parachutes?” “ No!” Says the man, “know anything about Coleman stoves?” This is BP: before propane.

Yes i was. At that time i was working R&D for Airco in their optical coatings department which among other things developed flat screen technology. So if you are using a laptop, iPad or flat screen tv, you’re welcome. When i joined that team, i was transitioning out of a fine arts career into an industrial/ engineering career. Been a fun ride.