Some time ago I had a conversion with Glenn about some of his wargaming projects. For one of these projects he was going to remount some artillery pieces onto new carriages from the Billing Boats range. This seemed like such a good idea I decided to steal it for one of my own projects.
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| Red Cannon - Evolution, Pale Cannon - Orion. |
The cannon needing new carriages are from the
Orion English Pirates set, and the
Evolution Pirates set. Links are to the reviews by PSR. The cannon suppilied in both of these sets are too big for their respective gun carriages, so I had been considering building up replacements with matchsticks, or massively cutting the guns down to fit the tiny carriages.
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| A Billings Boats sprue containing parts for two gun carriages. |
I was able to obtain these off the shelf from my local model store for around NZ$7. The packet contained two sprues, each with enough bits to build two gun carriages. No instructions are contained in the packet, but figuring it out is not too hard if you use an existing gun carriage as reference, and try a dry run first.
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| Some cutting down was required to get the gun to sit in a pleasing manner. |
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| Comparison to the Hat Royal Navy cannon. |
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| Orion cannon, pre and post treatment. |
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| Both Orion guns finished. |
I still have a few more bits and pieces to do on this project, but it is progressing nicely. Thanks again to Glenn for his idea!
Interesting project. I was wondering if the HaT naval piece might not have been a carronade, a type of cannon that was devastating at short range, but whose effectiveness dropped off sharply at any sort of distance. Your scratchbuilds look more in the nature of 'long guns', used for more ... erm ... surgical practice over longish ranges.
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that pirates (if you are using pirates) would have preferred the long guns as more effective means of bringing the chase to, without having to risk damage to the cargo...
The little gun trucks can still give good service as lighter pieces: poop deck or forecastle guns, perhaps arming lighter craft, or mounted in the eyes of the larger ships' boats...
Now that you mention all this, I seem to recall I have a small metal gun carriage that's looking for a home...
Cheers,
Ion
nice changes... what will these be used for?
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