The Home Machinist!

The large railways guns where operated with a shell and seperate powder bags for the propellant. with basically a huge blank shotgun shell to ignite it all.
so you could use a .22 blank?

to cut the breach threads? it might be worthwile to look at cutting them in with an EDM sinker. you could rough in everything you can with lathe and mill work. make seperate electrodes for each of the 4 sizes of threads, sink them individualy, index the breach, move over the coresponding pitch dimension and sink again. make a set of plug and ring gages for each size, cut them into the portions you need and double check everything.

the electrode could be sandwiched up with the 4 threads, so you only have to index 4 times, plus however many cleanup passes you would need to bring it in.

getting the seal on the nose to the barrel could be interesting, you dont want any gas leak back into the threads!

Gcarson, From Wikipedia a 14" gun would be 53.5' long, so in 1/8th scale that barrel would be a little over 6.5 feet, and the bore would be 1.75" diameter. Using a 22 round may be ok if this thing were to be built in Oguage or something but for 1.5" to the foot it just won't cut it!

As for using an EDM sinker, most of the ones I have ever seen are vertical arrangements. Once again finding one large enough to fixture such a barrel I would think would be a challenge in and amongst itself. I believe that the threads must have been turned into the back end of the actual barrel to handle all of the blast pressures and reactionary forces.

This would be one cool piece of machining if done up right. I still wonder though I know I have seen on TV collectors of military artillery, tanks etc... and I thought they can really shoot them. How are civilians able to own those? I would think that would more or less be along the lines of what this barrel would amount to anyhow.

they have aquired serious licsensing....class 3 with all the adendums. not an easy thing to do. most have had them for decades.....or it is associated with a business.


as far as the split thread....its not terribly difficult to do. Irepaired a winchester model 12 shot gun that was the break down version. the barrel was slight twist and off it came.

if /when I have some time I can demostrate it....i think more on the if I have time than the whenthe way things are going.

and if I am not mistaken some guns used a breech that operated much like the round bank vault doors......large beveled pins extended and retracted radially using a rack and pinion method.

Pamela

My brother was an engineer for a company building morter, and machine gun simulators for the military. Somewhere, i have all the information, design, drawings, circuit board design, etc. I will try and locate it. if anyone is interested, let me know.

_________________
Ralph M. Reese
St. Augustine, FL
Under Construction
LE Pacific
Allen 10 Wheeler

heck yea....I'm in


Pamela

APM,
actually I dug out the gun manuals last night. I was mistakin about using a "shotgun" shell for the primer, i thought the "full size" primer was about 1 3/4 in diameter, I was wrong. that was why i figured a .22 round could be used for the igniter. the "full size" primer is actually more like a .50 cal blank round. looks like a standard .50 bmg round, but with no shell.
the process of firing one of these big guns, drop the breach, it automatically blew a blast of air down the bolier to clear any remaining burning material. then you ramned the shell in till it set. then placed and ramned in 2 bags of powder for the propellant. then closed the breach and twisted it. then in the center of the breach plug was another minature breach, this opened and you slid in the blank .50 round, closed it and then it was ready to fire. either electricaly, or manualy. the trigger struck the .50 round. the bast from this was sent up the center of the breach plug and mushroom into the powder bags setting these of. the hole looks to be about 1/8 for the flame travel.
the earlier models had a hole in the breach plug that a bolt with lugs and handles that looked identical to a bolt from a bolt action rifle slid and then twisted just like a rifle. instead of a triger you pulled the firing pin back, a latch caught it and by pulling the lever the gun fired.
when I get a chance i will scan the drawings in and post them. as well as the trigger parts. I think I also have the drawings for the barrels them selves. they where made up of multiple tubes heat shrunk together. also have pictures and the description on how they cut the rifling in the barrels.

as to the edm comment, it is pretty standard in the industry to cut a hole in the side of the tank to extend it. I have ran a number of sinkers that have odd tanks added to the side to hold long parts. lay it on its side, use a dog legged electrode and work back inside the bore and its no problem. as to finish, that is up to the operater. a good operater will get finishes that rival surface ground finishes! others, well thats another story!

Grant

http://www.battleshipnewjersey.org/visit/turret.php

this will get you hands on the real thing


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OmOQs0z ... re=related

note the 6 bags of powder from what i have read the 16 inch guns used a primer bag, eletric egnition and were nitrocellose powder bases. amazingly enough smokeless powder was in use in the late 1800,s. each bag of powder was stored in a single can.

Oops I missed that you were talking about using the shell just as a primer! I thought you were talking about firing a 1.5" scale gun on a 22 and thought that was a little small. Now just wondering where did you manage to come across such manuals for that gun? I would have thought that at least for a while they would likely have been considered highly classified. This is definatley a project I dream of doing one day just because on the surface it seems so cool. On the other hand just learning about these guns is pretty darn neat too. I look forward to seeing the scanned drawings.

Well, I thought by now someone would post a photo of Dick Wunderlich's glorious Railgun.
It is a magnificent model in one inch scale ( 4 3/4"). He used a US Rail Gun for the prototype.
I think it was a Mark 10 (?)
Dick was a great friend and the world lost a true craftsman when he passed away unexpectedly a few years ago.
The Photo was taken at a Cabin Fever Show in 2006.
Maybe some Illinois Live Steamers know more, as Dick lived near their track

Rich

Well, The photo is too small, so how about this link

The original photo posted can be viewed quite large simply by clicking. When it opens on a new page, click on that page once again. It's all the larger. A great deal larger than the picture that was linked to the forum.

Beautiful piece of work!

Harold

_________________
Wise people talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something.

I want to know how he made that interlocking t-slot puzzle on the table