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Post by silverdragon on Oct 4, 2013 8:13:44 GMT
We just got THAT episode here in the UK.
The one when one of the cannon balls went missing ....
OOps.
Did it actually get aired in the USA or not?....
Stone cannon balls....
Ok, I have a question, I have seen many archaeological "Digs", we have the "Time team" thing here in the uk, yet this is the first I have heard of STONE cannon balls?...
I have to ask, what evidence is there that stone cannon balls were used....
Reason, it intrigues me, 'cos those stone things are actually a bloody good idea?...
Like why didnt anyone think of them before, and why, if they did, do we not have a plethora of evidence of cannon ball manufacture....
Especially as we have much granite deposits here in the UK.
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Post by Cybermortis on Oct 4, 2013 10:03:12 GMT
In order;
1; Yes, this episode aired in the US.
2; Stone shot predated iron shot by several centuries, in fact the earliest known cannon and guns used stones. (They also used arrows).
For cannon Stone shot was still in use by the early 1800's - the Turks were firing stone shot at British ships during the Napoleonic wars, although this was from older siege guns*.
Stone was replaced by iron shot in the mid to late 1500's - iron shot was mentioned as being used by the English during the Spanish Armada. Stone shot was considerably more expensive than iron, as you needed a skilled stone smith to create it and it could take a day or more (depending on the size of the shot) to produce a single shot**. Stone also tended to chip and crack in storage, which at best resulted in abysmal accuracy at any range and at worst meant the shot was unusable.
*Stone shot seems to have remained in use for siege guns for slightly longer than elsewhere. This is most likely because the really big siege guns tended to be built on site and were of none-standard calibre.
**Remember that MB had access to modern tools and were not using a gun that took shot weighing several hundred pounds.
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Post by the light works on Oct 4, 2013 15:20:41 GMT
As cyber implies, there are three factors involved in selecting material for shot:
availability of raw materials, ease of converting into ammunition, and effectiveness of the resulting ammunition.
metal very spectacularly outshines stone for factor#2.
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Post by Cybermortis on Oct 4, 2013 17:00:38 GMT
As cyber implies, there are three factors involved in selecting material for shot: availability of raw materials, ease of converting into ammunition, and effectiveness of the resulting ammunition. metal very spectacularly outshines stone for factor#2. Actually cost was one of the main factors, although that does relate directly to 1&2, and for shot that became increasingly important as the rate of fire for cannons increased. Circa 1588 the average rate of fire for the larger guns used by the Spanish ships in the Armada was roughly three shots per hour - this was mainly due to the guns not using the recoil to be brought back inboard when fired. So reloading required someone to literally hang over the side of the ship...an interesting experience to say the least. By 1700 ships could manage three or four shots in five minutes. |
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Post by the light works on Oct 4, 2013 17:10:10 GMT
As cyber implies, there are three factors involved in selecting material for shot: availability of raw materials, ease of converting into ammunition, and effectiveness of the resulting ammunition. metal very spectacularly outshines stone for factor#2. Actually cost was one of the main factors, although that does relate directly to 1&2, and for shot that became increasingly important as the rate of fire for cannons increased. Circa 1588 the average rate of fire for the larger guns used by the Spanish ships in the Armada was roughly three shots per hour - this was mainly due to the guns not using the recoil to be brought back inboard when fired. So reloading required someone to literally hang over the side of the ship...an interesting experience to say the least. By 1700 ships could manage three or four shots in five minutes. whereas for siege guns, the goal was to only fire one or two shots per siege. |
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Post by silverdragon on Oct 6, 2013 8:50:34 GMT
Well, You learn something new....
Siege, no, actually, on siege, it was a constant bombardment day and night that wore the enemy down...
I am told that one tactician literally had two camps, either side of a hill, one for the guns, one for the crew, and he rotated the crews every 12 hours or so so they could get some sleep, and he could fire day and night.
It wasn't a fast rate of fire, it was more harassment fire, with a random time between shots, which I am again reliably informed is rather annoying, when you have no rhythm to the shots, its rather annoying?... mental torture... you dont know when the next one will land....
Yes, stone, I can agree it may have been time consuming to produce.... but, with the skilled stone masons that built much of England's architecture, a whole day for one cannon ball would be the rate of n00b, the skilled craftsmen would be doing so many to the hour?....
Dependant on stone of course....
The stone used in Bath England is notoriously soft when it comes out of the ground, and hardens with age.
Fresh, it can be literally cut with a saw.... cut into rough squares, rough shaping, then onto the skilled ones for finalising, that was the usual way of creating fine shapes for buildings, I imagine a "production line" could create quite a few in a day between them....
And yes, due to the fact we have finials (Round bits) on the top of posts and the like, the skills to create and tools to shape balls were common...
As for building a foundry, digging the ors, collecting shipping and storing fuel, stoking the fire, smelting, creating balls, covering them in Graphite (The English secret of accuracy) and all the rest, the man hours in creating Iron or Stone....
That I aint sure.
Now I am going to say that the Stone is less man hours per ball....
I cant see the huge industrial needed for stone.
As for actual stone cannon balls, Its just I knew this of architecture, but not of artillery.... it has never crossed my mind, or been mentioned to me before?....
As I say, you learn something new every day.
Of course....
I now have another question....
Stone CANNON.
We had drills, which could smooth-bore a chunk of stone...
Those drills were used for blasting.
Normally the drill bire would be back-filled to direct the blast into the rock face, ....
So we knew already that it would otherwise fire projectiles.
So why didnt someone take a chunk of stone, drill hole, and use it as a cannon?....
If it breaks, its just disposable then isnt it?... its not as if the enemy could ever repair it.
I am thinking that after the battle is over, just junk the cannon, saves on the having to drag it back home?...
Then MULTIPLE holes.... multi-shot ballista type thing?....
Heavy... hmm, ok, so how does a stone cannon compare to iron....
Is Granite heavier than Iron when it comes to a workable cannon, and can sandstone or some other lighter material ever be used?...
Just dont overload it with black powder, ok?....
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Post by Cybermortis on Oct 6, 2013 13:19:21 GMT
You'd got that the wrong way around. Foundries were not built to make iron shot, iron shot was produced because the foundries were already there making other things. The only difference between making a plough or a skillet and a cannon ball would be the mould you used. Foundries were usually located near ore and/or coal mines, or in locations where shipping in the needed material in large amounts was not a problem - usually down river from mines or on the coast where they could also transport their products elsewhere easily. It was just as easy for a foundry to make iron shot as anything else, which is why iron shot was so much cheaper than stone shot and eventually replaced it. The majority of the workers were not all that highly skilled, certainly not to the extent that they were irreplaceable or had skills that were so much in demand that they could name their price - unlike skilled stone masons. This in turn kept prices lower. So a dozen cheap workers could produce several hundred round shot per day while it would make several hundred very expensive stone masons to match that level of production even when you ignore than a large proportion of the stone shot being made would be unusable by the time it reached the guns it was meant for due to chipping or cracking. Shot was NOT covered in graphite - we've had that conversation before. The Graphite was used to line the mould as it made it easier to remove the shot, it also resulted in a smoother surface for the cast balls. But this was incidental, or at least an unintended benefit to using graphite in this way. Stone that is that easy to work by hand would be totally unsuitable for use as munitions - it would shatter as soon as it hit anything. The type of stone used for shot was the VERY hard types - marble and granite. These are also the most difficult types of stone to work with - keep in mind that even with modern tools it took the MB's a day to make a single shot. Even accounting for higher skill in creating shot lowering production time, the fact is that even the best masons would be hard pressed to surpass MB's rate of production when dealing with granite. This tactic seems to be more in keeping with (slightly) later periods, when cannon were much more common and gun powder was carried in large enough amounts to make this possible. In earlier periods cannons and powder were uncommon enough to make such a tactic impractical. If you carried cannon in an army they were either field guns, which would do little to a castle wall, or specifically intended to breach the walls with a couple of shots. In the latter case the guns would most likely have been built on site specifically for this function and would have been more or less fixed in position and probably only fired a few times before the walls came tumbling down. Made and (apparently) used by the Chinese; www.scb-museum.com/english/ProView.asp?Proid=21 |
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Post by blazerrose on Oct 14, 2013 22:07:56 GMT
Something for the MB's to try, perhaps? They've tested leather cannons before.  |
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