What were the lengths of cannons (gun) barrels?

[shiloh]

Thanks, a lot of answers in Mr. Muller's work. Seems that the terms he used in the days of smooth bores, fits well with modern rifled pieces. Wonder if smooth bores will again become the norm using finned sabo equiped projectials, certintly allows for greater muzzle velocity. Don't believe that guns are dead, their future will be in throwing projectials using other ways than expanding hot gas. Kind of glad that I have experienced the smell of gunpowder.

jud

[doubloon]

Tried to post this earlier as a guest but I don't think it worked, if it did then apologies for the double post.

 

Very late to this topic but I was researching cannon dmensions for a 3D printing project, ran across this thread and found the info here very useful.

 

Using the info I made a thing and I'm sharing it here in case anyone might find it useful or interesting.

 

https://forum.freecadweb.org/download/file.php?id=89031

 

[CapnMac82]

Now, for some of the smaller caliber, e.g. those used on upper or spar decks, some would be of a given length, and others could be "shasers" with longer gun tubes.
So, a given vessel might have a dozen 8 pounders with 6 or 7 foot barrels, and have one or two pair with 8-9 foot barrels.

 

As the chasers were meant to be fired either fore or aft, they had more room to recoil, and might not be constrained by a deck above as well.

 

The tradition of measuring guns by caliber length was used as a way to standardize things which bore diameter started replacing solid shot weight descriptions.  But, that seems to be late in the muzzle-loading era.

[Dr PR]

I recently came across a discussion of gun sizes, and one consideration not mentioned so far in this thread was the weight of the guns. The total weight of the guns carried by a ship was limited. In some cases guns were made with short barrels in order to reduce the overall weight of the gun. This allowed more guns to be placed on the ships. This idea eventually led to the invention of the carronade.

 

For a given shot size there was more or less a standard diameter necessary for safe operation of the gun, so weight was reduced by shortening the barrel, not the barrel diameter. Of course, shortening the barrel reduced the effective range, so it was a trade off between effective range and the total throw weight of the broadside. Some ships carried a mixture of short guns and long guns, depending upon what was available, the whim of the Captain, and ship size. I suspect just about any combination you can imagine was afloat somewhere at some time.