The Ship Model Forum

I finished updating the IX on a wrought-iron carriage to the latest data and posted it on Thingiverse.
[attachment=4]iron_marsilly_slicer.png[/attachment]

Then I dabbled on the XV inch Dahlgren until it was done and posted as well. I'm not making a mount for this gun, but leaving it to whomever downloads it to fill that need. I did model a hole for the elevation screw, a touch-hole, and a slotted hammer lobe on the breech (I need to look up some of the nomenclature again).
[attachment=3]XV_Dahlgren_tube.png[/attachment]

Finally, I "finished" the XI Dahlgren on the wrought-iron pivot carriage and slide. I may have to comer back to this one, but it's got all I can give it for now.
As it's one of the guns in my [i]Guns of [b]Constellation[/b][/i] project, it's the one I actually need to print, though my first try at this failed because of a hole in the FEP and resin leakage to clean up.
[attachment=2]xi_iron_pivot02.png[/attachment]
[attachment=1]XI_iron_pivo.png[/attachment]

Here's the best shot of the real thing I can find to compare to...
[attachment=0]xi_iron_pivotsm.png[/attachment]

[size=150]Mention Dahlgren in a search and you'll get this image, or another of the series
[attachment=2]s-l1600.jpg[/attachment]

It's fits the time frame (1864ish), and I found a drawing from the Archives in [i]Arming the Fleet[/i], so I made it...
[attachment=0]50pdr_rifle_plan.png[/attachment]
[attachment=1]50pdr_rifle_wip.png[/attachment]

It would be "finished" except I'm trying to figure out the extra material in the back of the carriage causing the aft eyebolt to be mounted higher in the photo, compared to what's in the drawing.[/size]

The XI gun on the iron pivot is getting close to done
[attachment=3]XI_iron_pivot_wip20250317.png[/attachment]

Page 327 of the 1875 manual is a drawing of the wrought iron carriage for, it says, the 8 inch Dahlgren, which is a 9 inch smoothbore sleeved and rifled.
[attachment=2]ordnance1875pg327.png[/attachment]

It seems the drawing I originally worked from was off a bit in dimensions and shape, so I reworked my model to match the manual.
The carriage shown in the manual is a later modified version with one of the holes in the side plates filled, and a different elevation set-up. I'm making the original version, but I'll probably do the modified version as well.
[attachment=1]iron_marsilly20250317.png[/attachment]

During the 1870's, [b]Constellation[/b] was a training ship and fitted with two pivot guns at enlarged ports on her gun-deck; an XI inch Dahlgren on an iron pivot carriage, and a 100 pd Parrot rifle on a wooden pivot carriage.
She also carried 8 IX inch guns, which I assumed were on Marsilly carriages. I'm still digging to find if maybe they were iron carriages?
[attachment=0]constellations_gundeck_pivots.png[/attachment]

I contacted the people that manage HMS Warrior about possibly getting drawings or plans of the main deck gun carriages (they had to replicate them from something, right?) They got back to me saying that department was closed down for a while because their systems were hacked. :(

I found a rough PDF of the 1875 Navy Ordnance & Gunnery Manual, and a little more looking turned up a much better scan which contained this bit of info on the XI Dahlgren on the wrought iron pivot mount.
[attachment=6]ordnance1875pg336.png[/attachment]
[attachment=5]ordnance1875pg337.png[/attachment]

I had been working from a very nice drawing I found on Deviant Art, but it turns out at wasn't a real gun, but a movie-prop used in the 1960's 40,000 Leagues Under the Sea (I was wondering how that compressor was supposed to function...
[attachment=4]Abe_Lincoln_gun.png[/attachment]
[attachment=3]movie_prop.png[/attachment]

I rearranged, replaced, and rebuilt my 3D model of the XI pivot based on the 1875 manual and some photos. I'm working toward an early version of this gun mount. They got a lot of modifications going into the 1880s, dampers, gears, the gun's trunnions got cut off so they wouldn't poke out past the cap squares, etc.
[attachment=2]xi_iron_pivot01.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=1]xi_iron_pivot03.jpg[/attachment]

There was also a drawing of a later version of the "Iron Marsilly" There's some shape problems with my model I need to fix with this new data. I may also make one with the later elevation screw shown in the drawing.
The drawing says it's an 8 inch Dahlgren rifle, which is a 9" smoothbore sleeved and rifled.
[attachment=0]ordnance1875pg327.png[/attachment]

Nope. They added a caster sort of thing to train the gun, and a different style of elevation mechanism. I think there may have been a wooden bolster, or bumper, forward for when the gun was run up, but the only evidence I have for that is a rotting bit of wood on the front of one of these sitting in a park.
These are definitely NOT "display carriages." BTW: If you look closely at photos of extant carriages, those skids appear to be bronze. as do the trunnion fittings.
[attachment=0]476430188_122139216902492931_1284021387063216650_n.jpg[/attachment]

This is basically the same concept of carriage used on the early iron carriage XI inch pivots, of which, here's a survivor
[attachment=2]20241105_130124.jpg[/attachment]

And here's one in-service
[attachment=1]d08e0a4ae9e121dc9feb1300e166b4a8.jpg[/attachment]

Shouldn't there be a wooden (sacrificial) bolster under the rear end? All French carriages from that time I have seen seem to have it and it looks logical, as you don't want to have the angle-irons scraping along the deck.

Somehow, however, this looks to me more like a modern display carriage. Just two sheets of iron don't seem to be stiff enough to take the force of recoil. Normally there would have been an iron frame that is covered on both sides with sheet-iron for cross-stiffening. At least that was the way French and German gun-carriages of the time were constructed.

While searching for more data on [b]Warrior's[/b] gun carriages I kept tripping over pictures of IX inch Dahlgrens on iron Marsilly style carriages, a typical broadside piece on American vessels after the Civil War and through the 1870s.
[attachment=3]iron_marsilly3.jpg[/attachment]

I couldn't find any useful drawings for this carriage, (I already had the gun made). One drawing I found was of a something out of someone's head, or maybe a stage prop? The best I could manage was from a fellow that built a fire-able model. I scaled that image to the trunnions of my tube and used the photos of the real gun to eyeball the rest.
[attachment=2]iron_marsily3.png[/attachment]

So here's what I came up with;
[attachment=1]iron_marsilly.png[/attachment]
[attachment=0]iron_marsilly_slicer.png[/attachment]

So, this one's done, and posted on Thingiverse
[attachment=5]Arm40_slicer.png[/attachment]

It didn't print great, I had to beef up some things, as well as fix some details I left out...the pic above is after those fixes...
[attachment=4]20250211_140237.jpg[/attachment]

I guess I'm gonna have to do the other guns in [b]Warrior's[/b] armament; a 68# smoothbore and a 2-truck carriage for the 110#
[attachment=3]warrior7.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=2]armstrong_warrior2.jpg[/attachment]

The barrel for the 68# gun's made, but the carriage I'm having to eyeball
[attachment=1]68pd_wire.png[/attachment]
[attachment=0]68pounder_gun250218.png[/attachment]

It's looking like I'll need to do the rest of [b]Warrior's[/b] armament, I guess
...but I'm not building a model of the ship, no sir.

And....now I have my next 3D printing project....LOL

Thank-you!

NS

[size=150]Cabin fever has me doing crazy things; like another Armstrong gun[/size]

[attachment=1]arm40wip20250209a.png[/attachment]
[attachment=0]Arm40pdrWarrior.png[/attachment]

Thanks for the video. I didn't know that one. And, I didn't realise that the ball-lever is not connected to the breech-screw, but can rotate separately to tighten it with its inertia.

[size=150]A discussion on 3D modeling guns on another forum ;ed to a data exchange with a fellow in Italy named Carlo, that likes to model cannon in CAD.
He passed me some data not only on the 110# Armstrong, but several other Armstrong guns.
I passed him some data he lacked, like how the parts of the breech-screw went together.

This got me interested in revisiting my 110# BLR and making the breech functional. Initially I was just going to make the breech-screw (BS) shallow threaded and the breech smoth, so the BS would friction-fit, and printing in smaller scales wouldn't be an issue.
But Carlo sent me an STL of the breech with it's threaded insides, and the breech-screw with matching threads. I just had to see if this would work, so I scaled this to 1:36 and printed just this bit to test it. The scale threads were much too fine to work without some hand-work with a file, and if scaled wouldn't work at all. Instead of giving up, I made coarser threads. I couldn't use Carlos' breech, so I made a new breech from scratch with my coarser threads in it.
[attachment=6]arm20250202wip.png[/attachment]

A YouTube video of a 110# Armstrong being loaded and fired at Fort Nelson in Britain shows how the "lever" spins on the breech-screw to work as a hammer to tighten or loosen the breech-scew.

[i]I recommend right-clicking and opening the video in a "new tab"[/i]
https://youtu.be/LqUkDQ3BQ1A?si=-ATPpYwuslyXLWXe

I separated the "lever" from the BS, and modeled a groove in the back-end of the BS to accept the "keeper-pins that would hold the lever on the BS.
It's all a bit awkward to describe, but hopefully pictures will help:
[attachment=5]armstrong_breech-screw.png[/attachment]
[attachment=4]20250203_222809.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=2]20250205_134858.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=3]20250205_134622.jpg[/attachment]

The holes for the keeper-pins needed to be drilled out after printing, and I need to fine some wire for the pins, but it should be functional, allowing the lever to spin as in the video. The coarser threds on the breech work great without any hand-work, and should scale down to 1:96 and still work. The lever's function, on the other hand, I don't think will scale small at all, so I made a BS with the lever attached and not spin that will scale just fine.

Then I printed the carriage and slide for the first time
[attachment=1]20250205_181256.jpg[/attachment]
It didn't print great, a gremlin got into the print and started chewing on a corner of the slide as it was finishing.

I'm pretty much finished with this gun. My brain and wrist need a rest from all the mouse-work in my modeling software.
All the STLs have been posted to Thingiverse for anyone to take a shot at
[attachment=0]wip20250202a.png[/attachment]
[/size]

Thank you JoeP

So I made 3D models of a pair of Brooke Rifles, a single-banded version and a double-banded version, but not needing any myself, I never printed either of them.

Well, that changed recently when I actually printed a pair of one of them, the double-banded one, for a 1:48 scale model of the ironclad [b]CSS Neuse[/b] a fellow in the UK is building.

This is most impressive and serious work, thank you for sharing it.

Poking away at the XI Dahlgren on an iron carriage, though the images I have are into the 1880s and I have very little showing the earlier versions of it.
Here's the model in progress along-side the 100# Parratt it was mounted with on Constellation during the 1870s.
[attachment=3]constellations_gundeck_pivots.png[/attachment]

The guns I've printed so far got some paint
[attachment=4]ng20240413a.jpg[/attachment]

I found a drawing at the National Maritime Museum's website for the Armstrong gun's carriage and slide, and began making the 3D model for it.
[attachment=2]100pd_Armstrong_gun_on_a_sliding_carriage.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=1]armstrong_rbl_110-pound_cannon.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=0]wip20240429b.png[/attachment]

Making the 60# Parrott as Cumberland had in her last battle, got me thinking about her forward pivot gun, a 10 inch smooth-bore shell-gun.
Looking for data on this gun about the only thing I could find were some dimensions that weren't really helpful to me, bore diameter, bore length, etc, but one number was of use - maximum diameter. The 9 and 10 inch guns were of the same proportions, one was simply scaled up - according to the patent drawings. I already made the tubes for the 9 inch and 11 inch guns, so I just scaled the 11 inch tube to that maximum diameter.
[attachment=5]Dahlgren_tubes.png[/attachment]

The more difficult thing to find information on was the carriage. Short of an actual plan, like I had for the [b]Mississippi[/b] pivot gun, I found a drawing by Dahlgren himself submitted July 31 1850, as a proposed armament for "First Class Frigates," suggesting they be armed with [u]six[/u] 10 inch pivot guns on the spar deck, and 26 9 inch guns on the gun deck. The Navy rejected the proposal, mostly. They opted for two 10 inch pivots and the gun deck armed with 8 inch shell-guns and 32# shot guns.
[attachment=4]dahlgrens_1850_proposal.png[/attachment]

The 10 inch gun in the drawing looked familiar, because it was the the same as the gun depicted in the [i]Traversing Pivot Gun Carriage and Slide[/i] diagram in the [i]Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy[/i]. Dahlgren drew the same image and altered the tube of the gun to appear more like one of his guns, but left the Columbiad breech of the drawing as it was. Spencer Tucker in his [i]Arming the Fleet[/i] says the carriage was the same as that for for the Columbiads, but widened to accommodate the larger Dahlgren gun body.
[attachment=3]x_inch_dahlgren_pivot.png[/attachment]
[attachment=2]traversing_carriage_and_slide.png[/attachment]

Based on all that, I made my 3D model
[attachment=1]x_dahlgren_pivot.png[/attachment]

All this led me to think about my [b]Constellation[/b] model's pivot guns (link to that build-log in my signature) which led me to also print this gun, two of them actually, in 1:36 scale
[attachment=0]con20240331c.jpg[/attachment]

It seems that ogival projectiles fired from rifled guns were not so effective on wooden ships, as the projectiles punched relatively small holes through the wood, which were relatively easy to repair, if below the waterline. Als much damage to crew and hardware was done by the splintering wood and fragmented round shot, an effect that was less pronounced with the ogival projectiles.

Very interesting, btw, your reconstructions and 3D-prints. I would have expected more detailed documentation at least for the Union navy being available. For some European navies we have beautiful coloured lithographs or engravings illustrating the naval hardware of that period.

I made the carriage for the 60# Parrott according to the "plan" I found online, but it was different than the carriage in the "Powder Monkey" and other photos, so I went back and redid it. One thing I hadn't done is taper the carriage, that is the sides are closer at the front than at the back, and I had them parallel at first.
[attachment=3]parrott60_marsilly.png[/attachment]

I poked around trying to figure out a pivot carriage for the 60# Parrott. When the sloop of war [b]Cumberland[/b] was towed out of Gosport, she sailed up to Boston to be repaired. They apparently removed the aft 10 inch Dahlgren pivot gun and replaced it with a 60# Parrott pivot gun. On March 8th, 1862, Buchanan steamed the [b]Virginia[/b] right for the [b]Cumberland[/b] because he felt that rifled gun was a greater threat. That gun was fired on the [b]Virginia[/b] until the water reached it.
I found this at an antiques web site commemorating the [b]Cumberland's[/b] gun;
[attachment=0]cumberland1.jpg[/attachment]

My 3D model is pure conjecture where the carriage is concerned. I altered the pivot carriage for the IX inch Dahlgren to accommodate the relatively skinny Parrott rifle.
[attachment=2]60#parrott_pivot.png[/attachment]

Another gun from my list of [b]Constellation's[/b] guns is the 20# Parrott pivot gun. I modified the pivot carriage for the 30# Parrott for this one, as I've yet to see any images of one so far.
[attachment=1]parrott20pivot.png[/attachment]

The "Powder Monkey" image has been popping up recently, but you know social media, everything old is new discovery in a day or two.
Here's my favorite colorization of that photo
[attachment=7]parrott_boy.jpg[/attachment]

I always thought the gun was a 30# Parrott, but this recent attention to the images, and the other images of the [b]New Hampshire[/b] crewmen posing next to it had me realizing that wasn't right.
The gun's too big, relative to the men (and boys). So I looked up the [b]New Hampshire's[/b] armament and found she had 4 100# Parrotts in addition to her broadside pieces. That wasn't right either; the end of the cascable of this gun stopped right even with the back of the carriage, a 100# Parrott would have stuck out aft much further than that from where the trunnions were.
Digging around again, I found that the gun was a 60# Parrott, and I found actual plans for it. Well, pictures of plans, but the measurements were marked, so I could use them.
When I thought I could just pop my existing 3D model 30# Parrott on my already existing 3D model Marsilly carriage, and have another model made - it's turns out I have to start almost from scratch for this one.
I got the tube done, and added to the collection, but I have to come back to the carriage...
[attachment=6]60#parrott.png[/attachment]
[attachment=5]parrott_marsilly_plan.png[/attachment]
[attachment=4]parrott_tubes.png[/attachment]

While I'm not a fan of Confederate stuff, or pirate trash either for that matter, several folks have asked about the Brooke Rifled gun, and it does fit into the new focus of this project, so... it's back into the morass of the internet trying to find usable images and data.
I found a period profile drawing of the gun in a case-mate ironclad setting, and some period photos of the guns in a shore defense setting on an 8-sided wagon-wheel looking base. The period photos were taken from a slightly elevated position, so showed some details a profile drawing would'nt.
[attachment=1]brooke_2band_emplacement1.png[/attachment]
[attachment=0]brooke_2band_emplacement2.png[/attachment]

The profile picture I had I noticed was of a single-banded piece, and I happened upon a very similar drawing I just though was a better resolution version of the same gun when I saw it was a 2-banded piece and the carriage was different.
With this information, I shifted gears and separated into single, and a double banded models. This are still being tweaked and detailed before they're done, but here they are so far...
[attachment=3]brooke1band_rifle_3dmodel.png[/attachment]
[attachment=2]brooke2band_rifle_3dmodel.png[/attachment]