Here is a Scratchbuilt 1/12th scale Napoleonic Cannon, made from the drawings done by Barrie Voisey and sold under licence by John Thompson in the UK.
I acquired the working drawings/plans from “The Guild of Model Wheelwright’s” many moons ago.
I was looking through the list of drawings/plans that the Guild had for sale and came across this lot and decided to buy it and give it a whirl.
This is the type of gun developed for Napoleon III and eventually used by the British and US Armies in the second half of the Nineteenth Century.
The Limber was used to transport the gun, it also carried limited ammunition boxes and powder, whilst a further Ammunition Waggon would have followed up the rear.
This was the last set of plans designed/drawn by Barrie Voisey and is considered by many, to be his best work.
Started with the wheels, made all the ‘fellies’ as cake slices and glued them together, then I made the knaves/hubs and spokes and drove the spokes into the knaves.
Each spoke is fully hand worked to get the correct shape required for each spoke, took quite a while using “two different cut files” to get them ALL roughly to the correct shape.
The reason the spokes are shaped like an oval, is that it not only lightens the weight of each wheel, it strengthens the spoke as well, it makes things like branches, or rocks, slide of the smooth edged spoke if bumped by the wheel, without doing much damage to the spoke at all.
Now if the spoke is not oval shaped and left in the square section and it runs into something, instead of just sliding away on the smooth spoke it now jags the square corner edge of the spoke and 'can and will' tear the sharp corner away from the spoke.
One stuffed spoke now as that spoke needs replacing, so now you see why it was done.
So if a model horse drawn vehicle has squarish spokes, or round spokes, then that is all wrong.
Turned the fellies to the size required and then ground down the spoke ends, so they just fitted into the fellies, ‘Voila’, wheels all the same size.
All the wheels have ‘dish’ built into them, as per the full sized Cannon and Limber, which DOES have ‘dish’ built into each wheel.
There is a reason why the old time Wheelwrights, added Dish to the wheels as well.
If anybody is interested in this subject, then possibly a Google search is in order to find out the facts for yourself.
Axle is made from Brass square section bar, the axle is then fitted into the axle bed and then the stock and cheeks were added.
The cannon is made from brass, as per the drawing, and even fitted the trunnions to it as well.
All the bits that are meant to work, do so, like wheels turn, the barrel can be raised and lowered as well, only I made sure the cannon could not be fired, as I drilled the barrel shorter than the vent/firing hole.
Fitted ’Straked Tyres’ to the wheels as per what a Cannon on display in a museum in England has fitted to its wheels.
Straked tyres are bit different to a full sized steel tyre, as this is the “old” way of ‘tyring a wheel’, before the full steel tyre became popular..
When finished, I looked around the web and saw plenty of these models made as polished brass and lacquered wood, saw one of these Cannons in a picture from a museum in England, it was painted with grey on the wood and the metal work blackened, the cannon was made from bronze and had a slight rubbed down Bronze look about it.
Liked this look far better than the polished ones, so took to the brass cannon with a sand blaster, used very fine medium in the blaster, then blackened the barrel, followed by a severe rubbing down with a brass wire bush to give it that burnished look about it, then a clear coat to seal that look in and that made the model look like the cannon in the museum.
I added a lot of finer details to this model, like the three wooden pails which are 25mm tall, each pail is made from 14 seperate slats of timber held in place with 3 soldered brass rings which were gently hammered to the required taper on a tapered steel mandrel, just like the jewellers use for sizing rings.
The rope was made from platting crochet cotton and this is used for the handles on the pails and wrapped around the the business end of the cannon ram, which can be seen attached to the side of the cannon.
After it was finished I put it onto a “British Scale Model Horse Drawn Forum” and even had Barrie Voisey’s son email me and congratulate me on making it as per what they should have looked like.
He used to package all the bits into the kits that his father sold to the public, many, many moons ago now.
So he had seen numerous versions of this model, as a polished brass and lacquered model, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing one done, as what they should have looked like as a working one.
Sorry about the size of the pictures, had to retrieve them from Webshots before they shutdown and you could only retrieve a smaller version of the original photos.
All originals have been lost, due to a few computer crashes.
I have split the photos into two post again, a few “before photos” to show all the extra details and what materials were used, then the “after painting and assembled” photos.
Before painting photos ------------------
I acquired the working drawings/plans from “The Guild of Model Wheelwright’s” many moons ago.
I was looking through the list of drawings/plans that the Guild had for sale and came across this lot and decided to buy it and give it a whirl.
This is the type of gun developed for Napoleon III and eventually used by the British and US Armies in the second half of the Nineteenth Century.
The Limber was used to transport the gun, it also carried limited ammunition boxes and powder, whilst a further Ammunition Waggon would have followed up the rear.
This was the last set of plans designed/drawn by Barrie Voisey and is considered by many, to be his best work.
Started with the wheels, made all the ‘fellies’ as cake slices and glued them together, then I made the knaves/hubs and spokes and drove the spokes into the knaves.
Each spoke is fully hand worked to get the correct shape required for each spoke, took quite a while using “two different cut files” to get them ALL roughly to the correct shape.
The reason the spokes are shaped like an oval, is that it not only lightens the weight of each wheel, it strengthens the spoke as well, it makes things like branches, or rocks, slide of the smooth edged spoke if bumped by the wheel, without doing much damage to the spoke at all.
Now if the spoke is not oval shaped and left in the square section and it runs into something, instead of just sliding away on the smooth spoke it now jags the square corner edge of the spoke and 'can and will' tear the sharp corner away from the spoke.
One stuffed spoke now as that spoke needs replacing, so now you see why it was done.
So if a model horse drawn vehicle has squarish spokes, or round spokes, then that is all wrong.
Turned the fellies to the size required and then ground down the spoke ends, so they just fitted into the fellies, ‘Voila’, wheels all the same size.
All the wheels have ‘dish’ built into them, as per the full sized Cannon and Limber, which DOES have ‘dish’ built into each wheel.
There is a reason why the old time Wheelwrights, added Dish to the wheels as well.
If anybody is interested in this subject, then possibly a Google search is in order to find out the facts for yourself.
Axle is made from Brass square section bar, the axle is then fitted into the axle bed and then the stock and cheeks were added.
The cannon is made from brass, as per the drawing, and even fitted the trunnions to it as well.
All the bits that are meant to work, do so, like wheels turn, the barrel can be raised and lowered as well, only I made sure the cannon could not be fired, as I drilled the barrel shorter than the vent/firing hole.
Fitted ’Straked Tyres’ to the wheels as per what a Cannon on display in a museum in England has fitted to its wheels.
Straked tyres are bit different to a full sized steel tyre, as this is the “old” way of ‘tyring a wheel’, before the full steel tyre became popular..
When finished, I looked around the web and saw plenty of these models made as polished brass and lacquered wood, saw one of these Cannons in a picture from a museum in England, it was painted with grey on the wood and the metal work blackened, the cannon was made from bronze and had a slight rubbed down Bronze look about it.
Liked this look far better than the polished ones, so took to the brass cannon with a sand blaster, used very fine medium in the blaster, then blackened the barrel, followed by a severe rubbing down with a brass wire bush to give it that burnished look about it, then a clear coat to seal that look in and that made the model look like the cannon in the museum.
I added a lot of finer details to this model, like the three wooden pails which are 25mm tall, each pail is made from 14 seperate slats of timber held in place with 3 soldered brass rings which were gently hammered to the required taper on a tapered steel mandrel, just like the jewellers use for sizing rings.
The rope was made from platting crochet cotton and this is used for the handles on the pails and wrapped around the the business end of the cannon ram, which can be seen attached to the side of the cannon.
After it was finished I put it onto a “British Scale Model Horse Drawn Forum” and even had Barrie Voisey’s son email me and congratulate me on making it as per what they should have looked like.
He used to package all the bits into the kits that his father sold to the public, many, many moons ago now.
So he had seen numerous versions of this model, as a polished brass and lacquered model, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing one done, as what they should have looked like as a working one.
Sorry about the size of the pictures, had to retrieve them from Webshots before they shutdown and you could only retrieve a smaller version of the original photos.
All originals have been lost, due to a few computer crashes.
I have split the photos into two post again, a few “before photos” to show all the extra details and what materials were used, then the “after painting and assembled” photos.
Before painting photos ------------------
