So I took my brass cannon barrel blanks down to the local pewter store ...

[uss frolick]

About a dozen years ago, there used to be in my town, a local artist who specialized in custom art and figurines made of traditional pewter. A really cool old hippie dude, I asked him if he could make custom pewter casting s of a some cannon barrels that I had much earlier lathed out of brass. There were two types, a long 18-pounder  - British pattern - 'hung by thirds', of course - and a 32-pounder carronade barrel. His results were astonishingly good, as seen below. These were not finished in any way or cleaned up . The seams are barely noticeable, and the barrel cross sections are round, not squished, as I am told is often the case. The pewter finish is lovely by itself, before any chemical darkening or painting is applied.

 

Here are the long guns. the master above in brass and a cast gun below:

 

0-2 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

Here are the carronades. Note I had the trunnion and the fighting bolt cast  into it as one piece:

 

0 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

Together with a scale:

 

0-3 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

For comparative purposes, I have shown the long gun with Bluejacket's two large 1/4" scale cannon, what I believe to be a medium US Navy 32-pounder and an 8" shell gun, and carriage, from the antebellum period. Bluejacket's guns are cast from their own pewter-like metal with they call "Britannia", and have obviously not been cleaned up, and show a bit of flash:

 

0-5 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

My two barrels sitting on top of Bluejacket's carriages:

 

0-1 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

And I cast a lot of these barrels too. I had initially wanted to build an 18-pounder USN frigate, the Chesapeake, which sailed in 1811-12, when under Captain Evans, no fewer than thirty 18-pounders, and twenty-four 32-pounder carronades, 54 guns total. These were soon reduced under Captain Lawrence in 1813 to 49 guns. 

 

0-4 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

My barrels compared to Bluejacket's large carronade, certainly a 32 or a 42 pounder and carriage slide:

 

0-7 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

A pile of guns ...

 

0-6 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gregory]

How did you feel about the cost at the time?  How does it compare to BlueJacket's pricing today?

[druxey]

Obviously your pewterer knew what he was about when he made the molds. Very nice castings.

[bruce d]

They look superb. Now I'm looking around to see if there is a local version of your hippie-dude.

[amateur]

Very nice barrels. Pewter figurines used to be rather popular till someone found out than neither the production nor the playing with it was not without some health hazards

Perhaps your hippie-dude uses resin nowadays.  Have seen some very nice results with that.

 

also in this forum: 

 

Jan

[uss frolick]

He charged me for a bulk order, if I remember correctly, $4 per barrel, which was a good deal considering the quality of his castings. Pewter doesn't oxidize like white metal (neither does Bluejacket Brittania castings). As far as safety goes, well they did used to make plates and tankards out of it ... The fumes might be dangerous when casting, but I wasn't around for that.

[Morgan]

I’ve used Britannia white metal for casting many times and can highly recommend it, no shrinkage, flows well and minimal fumes makes it easy to work with.

 

Gary

[uss frolick]

So the Chesapeake project morphed into the US Sloop or War Frolick of 1813. Here are her guns, twenty 32-pounder carronades plus two long 18-pounders, the latter possibly taken off the blockaded and laid-up prize Frigate Macedonian. These big guns would go on to sink a large 'pirate' schooner (actually a Colombian privateer), during the course of a 45-minute running fight, but were later tossed overboard to try to prevent capture, and lie somewhere off the northern coast of Cuba to this day  :

 

0 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

Six extra carronades (I wish I had gotten more) for a possible, additional Frolickie cross-section ...

 

0-1 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

Frolick was taken into the RN as HMS Florida, and here is an 1816 drawing of her replacement battery:

 

0 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

Pirates! Beware the Frolick!

 

0-9 by St

 

0-4 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr

 

 

Frolick! Beware the Orpheus!

 

0-13 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr