Whitworth 12 Pounder

[hawkeye2]

I had it in mind to post this but never got around to it. The passing of its builder/owner Kenny White a few days ago, a skirmisher with the N-SSA for over 50 years and friend inspired me to share these photos in his memory. The piece is a full scale Whitworth 12 Pounder that he assembled on a carriage he had built by the Amish. Kenny had a 13' brass cylinder bored round its entire length then he took it to his shop where he had built a rifling machine using a hydraulic cylinder attached to a column. 7,300 passes later he had the hex bore seen in the photos. A lot of complex machining went into making the breech assembly including a double lead screw thread to close it. Ignition is with a friction primer in the center of the breech making this gun an in-line breech loader which, in this case, I hope will be allowed to stay here. The projectile is a machined aluminum bolt ($50 each) which is a duplicate of the original 12 pound iron bolt. The charge is 5 ounces as opposed to 1.75 pounds in the original. The gun is capable of duplicating the performance of the original which had a range of 5.7 miles.

I was fortunate to have served in the crew on this piece in an artillery skirmish 2 years ago. No, I'm not in any of the photos but I did get to load and to pull the lanyard several times. Quite enjoyable and the first time I had gotten to fire a cannon since I was in the Maryland Forces about 35 years ago. That's Kenny in the red shirt and straw hat.

 

[Coot]

Quite an ambitious project & looks very well done indeed. Thanks for posting!

 

[Dibbuk]

Beautiful. A lot of love and sweat went into building that.

 

[hawkeye2]

This is what the projectile looks like.

 

[Whitworth]

Here's one that was fired at Yankees at Gettysburg. Notice the gouges from rotation. That's one of my cast Whitworth bullets for scale.

 

[Antonio Ferraioli]

Now... that's a playtoy I would like to have.

 

[TNGhost]

Here's a video

 

[hawkeye2]

Thanks for posting that. I knew it was out there somewhere but couldn't find it last night.

 

[Whitworth]

Thanks, that was great. God Bless guys like him that undertake such labors of love and then share them with the rest of us. RIP Mr. White.

 

[toot]

yes-R-I-P. a truly great man, the type that only comes around once in a life time!!

 

[iloco]

That is an awesome canon.

 

[mzzldr]

Do you know if the Whitworth will be for sale?

 

[hawkeye2]

Do you know if the Whitworth will be for sale?

I expect it will be sometime in the future and most likely it will end up being purchased by a member of the N-SSA but that's just a guess on my part.

 

[Col. Batguano]

That is perhaps the finest replica cannon I have ever seen, a real work of art.