Guns

Oh my, but that is lovely. What is the bore diameter and it's dimensions? Is the carriage original? My small collection of small arms goes back no more than 140 years so I'm totally impressed.

Some years ago had an acquaintance who owned a muzzle loading cannon but it was homemade and not nearly as handsome and finished looking as yours. His fired a quart oil can filled with concrete and about the same powder charge. Fun to shoot but had never been fired in anger. No history to it at all.

At any rate, congratulations on your piece.

That seriously outclasses my only 10 meter gun, a 1882 Remington 10 gauge with a 3 inch chamber and 18 inch barrels. It's claimed to have once belonged to Doc Holiday but, alas, I have no serious provenance of that. It's a grade 4 with the barrels cut down to 18 inches and a gold front bead. It's in storage but here are some photos of a 1882. www.remingtonsociety.org/remington-model-1882-shotguns/

It's almost identical to Wyatt Earp's 1882 which recently sold for $64,500.00 which is a real incentive for me to dig further into the history of the gun. As it sits, it might bring a few hundred bucks which is OK since I paid $15.00 for it some six decades ago.

Facing off against your 2 pounder loaded with grapeshot at 30 meters would be a hopeless but valiant endeavor. Doing so should appeal to the British proclivity for brave but hopeless defenses.

Well, that's disgusting. My cheap junk HP computer just wiped out my reply to you. What a PITA. I'll try to reconstruct. My reply to your grapeshot loaded cannon would be my P.O. Ackley .270 built on a Mauser model 98 action. To hell with a fair face to face fight, I'll take you under fire from 5-600 yards away.

At any rate do you have cannon competitions in your country? I presume it to be Britain but don't know if that's so. Lots of reenactment clubs and societies here in the states along with competitions with cannons, mortars, etc. It would seem that mortars were actually the most accurate. I recall that the Royal Navy had some large ship mounted mortars during the Napoleonic wars but that comes from reading the "Hornblower" novels so that's not from diligent historical research.

As an aside, most people know what "shrapnel" is but few know that it's named for Lieutenant-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842) who invented the bursting artillery shell. I find the history of firearms from the most primitive hand cannons to the most modern rifles to be fascinating. It has all culminated in the fixed cartridge weapons that achieved their most interesting developments between the 1860s through the early 20th century. Everything else has been refinements of existing technology. Guns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are the most interesting to me. That's when real innovation occurred.

I doubt your ballistics for your 2 pounder but have nothing to disprove it. Effective range for a shotgun is usually considered to be around 30 yards and that's with a choked gun. Your 75 projectiles would be traveling at 1020 fps at the muzzle. No choke so cylinder bore spread. However, you have the cannon so it would make an interesting experiment. Let's see a target from 600 yards using .5 inch balls. The old girl looks like she could use a little exercise so show us what she can do.

Just curious but what country do you call home?