Fig. 335 shows a gun that is interesting to make.
The carriage consists of two pieces of stripwood, ½" × ¼" × 8" (a b and c d in Fig. 335). A cannon, E, is made out of a roll of brown paper, length 3½ inches, diameter about ¾ inch, and glued between a b and c d, or it may simply rest on cross-pieces of wood joining a b and c d. G is a piece of wood, ¼" × ¾" × 3½", turning on a pin or piece of wire, H, which passes through a b and c d. a b and c d are glued to a piece of stripwood F (¼ inch by ¼ inch) which has its projecting ends rounded to receive two cardboard wheels. The great fault of these earlier cannons was that though they were often of immense bore and weight, throwing balls of from one to five hundredweights, they were for the most part without carriages, and therefore very difficult to move about and very slow in their operations.
The Scots were the first to anticipate the modern gun-carriage by what they called 'carts of war,' which carried two guns. Many of the guns of the English required fifty horses to drag them!
'Mons Meg' (a fifteenth-century cannon still to be seen at Edinburgh Castle) is an easy model to make.
Fig. 336
Parts A and B (Fig. 336) are drawn on cardboard, cut out and coloured (brown and black). They are joined together by strips of cardboard at a b and c d. To the cardboard at a b the cannon is gummed. The wheels are of cardboard, the axle of stripwood (¼ inch by ¼ inch). Mons Meg fired a granite ball weighing 300 lb.
A Tudor Cannon (Fig. 337). The sides A A may be cut out of cardboard or, better still, of three-ply wood with the fret-saw. The wheels are solid discs and may also be cut out with the fret-saw, holes being drilled in the centre for the axle. The cannon itself can be shaped out of wood with pen-knife and file, or a cardboard roll (such as is used for transmitting music or pictures) can be used, the thicker parts are then made by gumming additional pieces of cardboard round it, or glueing strips of lead.
