Cannon from the War Between the States to be restored

[Quarks]

Two 8-inch Rodman cannon from 1865 at the Union County (Liberty, IN) courthouse are to be cleaned up & restored.

http://www.indystar.com/article/2009...to+be+restored

Information

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[smle-man]

There is a pair of these sitting in front of the 40th ID HQs, CAARNG, Los Alamitos JFTB near Los Angeles. I wonder if these are part of the 500 remaining guns the article mentions.

[John Kepler]

Two 8-inch Rodman cannon from 1865 at the Union County (Liberty, IN) courthouse are to be cleaned up & restored.

http://www.indystar.com/article/2009...to+be+restored

Being somewhat picky...the proper name for the gun is an M1861 8" Columbiad. The only thing "Rodman" about it is the casting process he patented, though the moniker is often used generically for the M1859-M1861 Columbiads...incorrectly.

Columbiads as a class were an American innovation in the design of Seacoast-Garrison shell-guns beginning in 1841. They were formidable, highly effective weapons, and deserve proper identification.

[Jim K]

Why restore them? Obama plans to confiscate them as "assault weapons". If the Navy's ceremonial swords are considered a threat to the Commander-in-Chief, think what those guns could do to the President-for-Life (may his Holy Name be praised by all the angels forever).

Jim

[Tom in N.J.]

There are two 20" Rodman guns, one at Ft. Hamilton, NYC and the other across the entrance to the harbor at Fort Hancock, Sandy Hook, NJ. Here it the one at Ft. Hancock.

[Alfred]

There are two 20" Rodman guns, one at Ft. Hamilton, NYC and the other across the entrance to the harbor at Fort Hancock, Sandy Hook, NJ. Here it the one at Ft. Hancock.

That looks like something you'd expect to see in a Bugs Bunny Cartoon.
Daffy Duck should be sticking his head out of the muzzle about now sniffing the air at the wisp of smoke from the burning fuze Bugs just lit.

[John Kepler]

And those are two of the Grand Total of 2 20" Columbiads known to have been cast! The one at 4th and 101st in Brooklyn is #1, completed in August, 1864, the one at Ft. Hancock in New Jersey is #2, and it wasn't completed until 1869...a third may or may not have been cast sometime after the war and sold to Peru! For a variety of reasons, the guns were fired VERY infrequently, and may have never fired 20 rounds between them before they were removed from service around 1878 (#1 is documented to have fired 4 rounds in 1864, and an additional 4 rounds in 1867...no more!). They are MASSIVE weapons (just over 58 tons!)...the 20" Seacoast Columbiads weighed twice as much as the far more common 15" version.

FWIW, Rodman's casting method was a primitive form of chill-casting, and it DID create a superior, much higher-strength casting with the available metallurgy than conventional sand-casting. Having said that, the significant improvement in strength was NOT for the reasons that Capt. Rodman articulated in his patent abstract. While Rodman misunderstood WHY his casting method worked the way it did, the results were as irrefutable as they were insightful.

[jjroth]

Lenawee Cty., Michigan.

Will check in two weeks.

[John Kepler]

M1861 Columbiads, yes....20" Columbiads, no! The ones in Lenawee are likely 10", possibly 15".

One of the neatest, most improbable Columbiads I've ever encountered is right off the old PRR Main-Line in Ada, Ohio. I saw that gun every day growing up as a kid....even turned a replica of the tube on Grandpa's wood lathe because it was so unique. Most people with passing knowledge of 19th Century artillery that simply glance at it would call it a large, somewhat strangle-looking Parrot Rifle....and they'd be wrong!

The gun is an M1844 8" Columbiad, banded and rifled by Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond VA in 1862, and clearly marked "CS" if you climb up on the monument before the cops show up! How that beast got to Northwest Ohio for a Civil War monument is it's own little mystery.

[John Kepler]

One additional comment on the article. Like most journalistic writing these days, it's sorta right! The guns weren't cast "near Ft. Pitt" but at Fort Pitt Foundry, which was located in downtown Pittsburgh in what is now the Strip District along the Allegheny! The iron works was established in 1804, and it's first "mil-spec" job was the casting of the cannonballs used by Commodore O.H. Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813. Also, I hope the group doing the restoration does a bit more research on the actual mass of those tubes....the "2-3 tons" quoted in the article is off by just about 100%! It's an important number to get right when you bring in a crane!

FWIW, Fort Pitt Foundry cast over 60% of the US artillery used in the Civil War, and became the core-business of Carnegie Steel nee US Steel at the turn of the 19th Century!