The Ship Model Forum

EDIT: this little project has expanded from printing some guns for other modelers and a sampler of Constellation's guns, to basically every and any gun I can find usable data for from the 1850's to the 1870's.
As they are completed, I'm posting the STLs on Thingiverse. Note: all the guns are modeled in 1:36 scale and some details may not survive reducing to scales such as 1:96 - use at your own risk.

We now return you to your scheduled program, already in progress...

Working on 3D models of some Civil War Naval guns to print for someone's model of the Harriet Lane, I got the idea to do a sampling of each gun the sloop of war Constellation carried in her career up to present day.
Constellation is a 1:36 scale radio-controlled model

The idea is to 3D model and print one of each gun the ship ever carried (that I can determine) in the same scale as the model, that will be displayed with the model when it's on static display, which she is from time-to-time.

Her armament over the years has been:

At Commissioning
8-inch shell guns on 4-truck carriages
32-pounder guns on 4-truck carriages
10-inch pivot mounted shell guns (removed July 15 1859)
12pdr Dahlgren boat howitzer (in launch)

During the Civil War
8-inch shell guns on 4-truck carriages
32-pounder guns on 4-truck carriages
30-pounder pivot mounted Parrot Rifle (bow) iron carriage?
20-pounder pivot mounted Parrot Rifle (stern) iron carriage?

1870's
9-inch Dahlgren guns on Marsilly carriages?
100-pounder Parrot Rifle on wood carriage (gundeck starboard #6 port enlarged to 10ft)
11-inch Dahlgren on iron carriage (gundeck portside #6 port enlarged to 10ft)

1914
24-pounder guns borrowed from Constitution for Celebration of War of 1812 in Baltimore

1956-1997
24-pounder guns (not sure where they came from or where they went)

1999+
8-inch shell guns on 4-truck carriages (fiberglass reproductions)

My list of guns to make amounts to:

• 8-inch shell gun on a 4-truck carriage
• 32-pd gun on a 4-truck carriage
• 10-inch pivot mounted shell guns*
• 12 pd Dahlgren light boat howitzer*
• 30-pounder Parrot Rifle on iron pivot carriage
• 20-pounder Parrot Rifle on iron pivot carriage
• 9-inch Dahlgren gun on Marsilly carriages*
• 100-pound Parrot Rifle on wood carriage
• 11-inch Dahlgren on iron carriage
• 24-pounder gun on truck carriage
• 32 pound Carronade

*=already made

Since the model was intended to actually sail, I opted not to model the gun deck, and never made a model of the 8" shell guns or the 32 pounder shot-guns. I did model the 10" shell gun pivots based on plans for the Mississippi's gun from the National Archives.
I also modeled the launch's boat howitzer, but I'm not sure I'll include it in this display or not. One other model, already modeled, and printed, is a IX inch Dahlgren on a Marsilly carriage. Two other guns I'm working on for the Lane are a 9" gun on a pivot mount and a 24 pd Dahlgren howitzer on a swivel carriage - but I won't need them for this project.

The STLs for all these guns are, or will be posted on Thingiverse. They're 1:36 and I can't say how well they'll scale down. I did accidentally print a smaller boat howitzer which came out great, and the Marsilly-Dahlgren was printed at 1:96 only losing it's eyebolts...so... Now that I think of how to set-up this display, I should probably group them by time-period, which means I'll have to print more than one copy of some of them, like the 8 inchers and 32 pounders.

Still making guns for the Lane, she had 2 24 pdr howitzers and a IX inch Dahlgren on a pivot. The pivot's carriage is based on a photo of the Miami's (Mendota) gun. 3D prints of them all and some spares But none of those are on my list
What is on my list is an 8" shell gun on a Naval truck carriage, which I modeled inside of a day by re-scaling the 10" shell gun's tube, and stealing some parts from the Marsilly carriage. I haven't printed this yet. The Lane get's one more gun; a 30pdr Parrott rifle on a pivot carriage. It took a lot of searching, but I finally found drawings for both the 20pdr and the 30pdr. I need both for my list.
The Lane's Parrott is going on a wooden pivot carriage, though I'm having a hard time finding a photo or drawing of such a thing.
The folks running the Constellation in Baltimore told me the Parrotts were on iron carriages, and showed me a plan from the Archives of them. I was building the ship at an earlier time, so I never got a copy of the drawing, and now I can't find it.
I'm not even sure they were on iron carriages because much of what the restoration people told me back then turned out to be wrong. It means more searching I suppose...

Here's the 20 and 30 pounder Parrotts in progress...

I finished the Parrott rifle tubes with reworked breaches and cascables. While searching for data on the 30pdr's pivot carriage, I built the 100 and 150 pounder guns. Years ago I visited the Constellation and was shown a drawing from the US National Archives of a 30pdr Parrott on a pivot carriage. I took some photos of the plans just out of interest, but never got a copy as I didn't figure I needed it.
I found those photos on my hard drive, and they were enough to build the model from. I need a 30pdr in 1:36 for my list, and 1 in 1:96 for the Harriett Lane and both of them are on the printer now, as I type this.

Another gun from my list that was modeled, was printed today, the 32 pounder.

Between modeling and print guns for other folks, I've managed to get four of my own printed so far; the 32# gun, the IXDahlgren on the Marsilly carriage, and these two... The 8" tube needs to be reprinted, as a part of the breech misprinted. As for other people's guns, I made a 7" Armstrong breech loading rifle, and had to print it to see how my simple breech plug would turn out.
The plug just slips in, the screw breech mechanism doesn't function, though I'm tempted to make one that does, maybe.

Jerry the Parrot Pivot gun is an absolute beauty!! Very well done.

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 I always thought the gun was a 30# Parrott, but this recent attention to the images, and the other images of the New Hampshire 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 New Hampshire's 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... 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. 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...

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. I poked around trying to figure out a pivot carriage for the 60# Parrott. When the sloop of war Cumberland 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 Virginia right for the Cumberland because he felt that rifled gun was a greater threat. That gun was fired on the Virginia until the water reached it.
I found this at an antiques web site commemorating the Cumberland's gun; 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. Another gun from my list of Constellation's 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.

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.

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. The more difficult thing to find information on was the carriage. Short of an actual plan, like I had for the Mississippi 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 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. The 10 inch gun in the drawing looked familiar, because it was the the same as the gun depicted in the Traversing Pivot Gun Carriage and Slide diagram in the Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. 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 Arming the Fleet says the carriage was the same as that for for the Columbiads, but widened to accommodate the larger Dahlgren gun body. Based on all that, I made my 3D model All this led me to think about my Constellation 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

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. The guns I've printed so far got some paint 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.

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

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 CSS Neuse a fellow in the UK is building.

A discussion on 3D modeling guns on another forum led 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 smooth, 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. 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 recommend right-clicking and opening the video in a "new tab"
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: 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 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 [/size]

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.

Cabin fever has me doing crazy things; like another Armstrong gun

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

Thank-you!

NS

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

So, this one's done, and posted on Thingiverse 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... I guess I'm gonna have to do the other guns in Warrior's armament; a 68# smoothbore and a 2-truck carriage for the 110# The barrel for the 68# gun's made, but the carriage I'm having to eyeball

While searching for more data on Warrior's 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. 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. So here's what I came up with;