Hello!
This is the third in my series of cannon fabrication build-alongs. This one will be slightly different as its going to take me quite some time so I'll be doing it in pieces. What has enabled me to do this particular build was my acquisition of a Logan 820 lathe. It is a 10X24 lathe meaning it can turn stock up to 10" in diameter and its 24" between centers.
Here is a picture of the lathe itself:
The machine is a 1947 and has some nice features such as its automatic gearbox which prevents me from having to swap out gears to change threading or feed speeds. The amazing this is this lathe came with a lifetime of tooling. Hundreds of pounds of tooling like this:
I could go on for pages but it also came with 4, 6 and 8in chucks in three and four jaw configurations, milling attachment, steady rest, shaping attachment, etc etc. I easily scored 5X the lathe's value in tooling.
Installing the lathe was fun...i did it solo and at about 750 pounds it was not for the faint of heart. I wont show pictures of that process as it probably violated all rules of safety and involved a come-along and an eye bolt in my ceiling.
Without further ado, here is the beast piece of steel this cannon will be fabricated from....2.75" in diameter, 12" long and weighing in at almost 15 pounds. When i took it out of the box it came in through the mail I thought to myself "maybe i went a little too big." This is a serious hunk of metal. 1018 steel.
First thing I did was chuck it up and to take a light surface pass across everything. The surface was chromed or something as it came off in some seriously scary and odd colored curls. Here's a few of those first passes. This took some adjusting in terms of my feed rates and RPM as the increased diameter meant the surface speed was much higher than I had been used to running less than 1" stock.
As with any horrible looking steel, it started looking gorgeous under the surface:
Once i took a surface pass the first thing up was what will turn out to be the most tedious of all: Drilling the bore. Metal this big required support. In this pic you can see the steady rest all set up and lubed as well as the center drilled hold where I had held the piece for the initial turning. No part of this process can be done without support unless I want to risk a 15 pound metal projectile swinging around my shop.
Next post will be the drilling process.
This is the third in my series of cannon fabrication build-alongs. This one will be slightly different as its going to take me quite some time so I'll be doing it in pieces. What has enabled me to do this particular build was my acquisition of a Logan 820 lathe. It is a 10X24 lathe meaning it can turn stock up to 10" in diameter and its 24" between centers.
Here is a picture of the lathe itself:
The machine is a 1947 and has some nice features such as its automatic gearbox which prevents me from having to swap out gears to change threading or feed speeds. The amazing this is this lathe came with a lifetime of tooling. Hundreds of pounds of tooling like this:
I could go on for pages but it also came with 4, 6 and 8in chucks in three and four jaw configurations, milling attachment, steady rest, shaping attachment, etc etc. I easily scored 5X the lathe's value in tooling.
Installing the lathe was fun...i did it solo and at about 750 pounds it was not for the faint of heart. I wont show pictures of that process as it probably violated all rules of safety and involved a come-along and an eye bolt in my ceiling.
Without further ado, here is the beast piece of steel this cannon will be fabricated from....2.75" in diameter, 12" long and weighing in at almost 15 pounds. When i took it out of the box it came in through the mail I thought to myself "maybe i went a little too big." This is a serious hunk of metal. 1018 steel.
First thing I did was chuck it up and to take a light surface pass across everything. The surface was chromed or something as it came off in some seriously scary and odd colored curls. Here's a few of those first passes. This took some adjusting in terms of my feed rates and RPM as the increased diameter meant the surface speed was much higher than I had been used to running less than 1" stock.
As with any horrible looking steel, it started looking gorgeous under the surface:
Once i took a surface pass the first thing up was what will turn out to be the most tedious of all: Drilling the bore. Metal this big required support. In this pic you can see the steady rest all set up and lubed as well as the center drilled hold where I had held the piece for the initial turning. No part of this process can be done without support unless I want to risk a 15 pound metal projectile swinging around my shop.
Next post will be the drilling process.
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