John Dahlgren submitted a drawing, dated July 31 1850, proposing his idea of the ideal armament for "First-Class Frigates" suggesting they be armed with
six 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, and the big frigates, razees (cut down frigates) were armed in this manner, including
Constellation, the newest, and largest sloop-of-war that wasn't a razeed frigate.
Attachment:
File comment: 10 Shell Gun ~ Pivot Carriage
from Dahlgren's 1850 proposal
x_inch_dahlgren_pivot.png [ 158.32 KiB | Viewed 1350 times ]
On a visit to the ship, years ago, they showed the
Mississippi Pivot Gun plans, saying that was what
Constellation was originally armed with; which were eventually replaced with Parrott rifle pivots, a plan they also showed me. I took some pictures of the Parrott plans, but went to the National Archives in College Park Maryland, to get a proper copy of the
Mississippi plan.
On August 26 1854, the sloop-of-war
Constellation would be launched. Almost a year later, June 1855, the plan for the 10 inch pivot guns for the side-wheel frigate
Mississippi was drawn. Another year on,
Constellation was commissioned on July 28 1855.
Attachment:
File comment: Plan for Mississippi's 10 inch pivot guns of 86cwt
10inchpivot.jpg [ 530.23 KiB | Viewed 1350 times ]
It seemed to me to be unlikely the ship would be armed with a gun from a plan drawn a year after her launch, while her razeed contemporaries were armed with the Dahlgren around the same time, 1853~1856. So far, I haven't been able to track down any sort of documentation that can nail down precisely which 10 inch shell gun
Constellation got. The
Mississippi gun is, so far as I've seen, always referred to as a "10 inch shell-gun of 86cwt" while the Dahlgren simply referred to as a "10 shell-gun" or a "X inch shell-gun." I haven't yet found a references to
Constellation's guns as "86cwt." The 10 inch Dahlgren is 120cwt, and I've never seen anything referring to it in that way.
Since it's really isn't that big a job, being able to 3D print now; I decided to switch the model's pivot guns to Dahlgrens. Since I was already making the 3D model for my Naval Gun project, it didn't really add to the work-load.
Attachment:
File comment: 3D model of X inch Dahlgren pivot
x_dahlgren_pivot.png [ 180.97 KiB | Viewed 1350 times ]
The slide for this gun, while very like the
Mississippi gun's slide, was wider and shorter. I used the slide from the 3D model of the previous pivot gun, shortened and widened, which saved some time and effort.
I printed the gun in three parts; slide, carriage, and tube; to facilitate painting, and reducing what I'd need to reprint if one of the parts failed. The first gun lost one of it's rollers, but I could fix that without reprinting. The second gun printed perfectly.
Attachment:
File comment: Second gun, fresh off the printer
con20240331a.jpg [ 258.65 KiB | Viewed 1350 times ]
Attachment:
File comment: New Dahlgrens next to the gun they're replacing
con20240331d.jpg [ 320.21 KiB | Viewed 1350 times ]
A shorter slide meant I needed to make new deck tracks, which I 3D modeled like last time, but I made them short/thinner to be more in scale.
Attachment:
new_tracks.png [ 401.46 KiB | Viewed 1350 times ]
The guns are mounted on access hatches, fore and aft. I removed the old tracks, sanded the scars best I could, and re-coated the hatch decking with polyurethane. The newly printed tracks were primed, painted, glued onto the hatches, painted again, and the whole thing was clear-coated. The guns too were primed, and the tubes painted and detailed, but the carriages and slides are waiting to be painted the same olive color as the old set.
Attachment:
File comment: Deck hatches cleared of old tracks and refinished.
con20240404a.jpg [ 242.26 KiB | Viewed 1350 times ]
Attachment:
File comment: Aft pivot
con20240408b.jpg [ 170.75 KiB | Viewed 1350 times ]
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