Cannon balls with an iron core?

[jerkface11]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ear...eveals-armour-piercing-cannonball-secret.html

According to the article cannon balls recovered from the Mary Rose had a cube shaped iron core. They think the cannon ball shed the lead on impact and the iron would penetrate the hull of the enemy ship. I'm not so sure it would work that way. Does anyone want to try it out?

 

[4v50 Gary]

I doubt if the iron had enough momentum to carry itself through the lead body.

Also interesting is how the gold coins of Henry VIII's realm had been debased - just like the Romans and Athenians did.

 

[jerkface11]

I wonder if they added enough velocity to matter. Or if it was just a weight savings for the ship.

 

[ironworkerwill]

iron is 480-491 lbs/cu ft and lead is 708 lbs/cu. ft. I doubt the iron core would shed the lead as well. Might just be a filler?

 

[desidog]

What was the economy of lead vs iron back then? I'd guess iron was cheaper and more plentiful.

Later, during the Napoleonic wars, the British Navy was using cast iron balls, with no lead. But by this period they were using sheet lead as sheathing on the exterior of the hulls to protect them from worms and barnacles etc.

While the cast iron would increase velocity over lead, they categorized their guns by the weight they shot, which would obviously vary, and not the bore diameter.

 

[Sunray]

The guns on the Mary Rose were barely out of the rock throwing days. The "purely to lower costs" is far more likely. Hank was always short of money for his military adventures. Nothing ever changes. snicker.
No ship of Hank's day had armour anyway. Don't think they even had copper sheathing(moreso than lead) on their bottoms.

 

[CANNONMAN]

Just got back from a house flip. Boy-o-Boy am I getting to old for that! Anyway, I'm in. I can cut a steel cub to fit inside one of my ball molds. Heat it, the mold and pour. My problem: I went to chrono a cannon a week or so ago. Really nice day, well it was... So I set up my chrono about 10' in front of a 3" bore cannon. Now I can hit a 2' rock at 500 yds so 10'? piece of pie. Or so I thought. How hard can it be to shoot a 3" ball through a big ole triangle? Darn it! It looked great! You could see it was a shot lined up via some professional cannon shooting guy. We spent the next ten or twenty minutes looking for all the pieces of my chrono. I found the little read out panel. It said 20? No idea what that meant. So, creating the steel filled shot, not a problem. Figuring out what it's doing... that's a problem. Anyone got a chrono they want to lend me? I'll show it a good time. [Probably wont need return postage.]

 

[230RN]

I vote for cheapness in manufacture, just as the coins were "debased."

I read once that most of the lethality/danger of cannonballs was due to the high velocity of the wood splinters and flinders flying around on impact, in addition to the structural damage.

Maybe the lighter iron/lead cannonballs enhanced the velocity, thus increasing the splintering effect. Of course, they wouldn't know this from any theory, just from practical experimentation or observation.

It's surprising how many advances were made that way.

Rust does take up more volume than the base iron, so I can see the lead splitting open from rusting. (That's why rusty bolts are so hard to remove.)

 

[ofitg]

According to Wikipedia, the Mary Rose already had 5-pounder Sakers and larger guns for anti-ship use -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose

The UK Telegraph article described the iron/lead projectile as a "1kg" ball. I'm guessing that it wasn't intended for anti-ship use.

 

[ofitg]

Just got back from a house flip. Boy-o-Boy am I getting to old for that! Anyway, I'm in. I can cut a steel cub to fit inside one of my ball molds. Heat it, the mold and pour. My problem: I went to chrono a cannon a week or so ago. Really nice day, well it was... So I set up my chrono about 10' in front of a 3" bore cannon. Now I can hit a 2' rock at 500 yds so 10'? piece of pie. Or so I thought. How hard can it be to shoot a 3" ball through a big ole triangle? Darn it! It looked great! You could see it was a shot lined up via some professional cannon shooting guy. We spent the next ten or twenty minutes looking for all the pieces of my chrono. I found the little read out panel. It said 20? No idea what that meant. So, creating the steel filled shot, not a problem. Figuring out what it's doing... that's a problem. Anyone got a chrono they want to lend me? I'll show it a good time. [Probably wont need return postage.]

Sorry, I laughed, couldn't help it.....

As Tuco might say, "There are two types of people in this world - the ones who shot their Chronys, and the ones who are going to shoot their Chronys".

I nailed my first Chrony with a pellet rifle.... but I think you might be the first person to kill his Chrony with a blackpowder cannon!

 

[whughett]

Just got back from a house flip. Boy-o-Boy am I getting to old for that! Anyway, I'm in. I can cut a steel cub to fit inside one of my ball molds. Heat it, the mold and pour. My problem: I went to chrono a cannon a week or so ago. Really nice day, well it was... So I set up my chrono about 10' in front of a 3" bore cannon. Now I can hit a 2' rock at 500 yds so 10'? piece of pie. Or so I thought. How hard can it be to shoot a 3" ball through a big ole triangle? Darn it! It looked great! You could see it was a shot lined up via some professional cannon shooting guy. We spent the next ten or twenty minutes looking for all the pieces of my chrono. I found the little read out panel. It said 20? No idea what that meant. So, creating the steel filled shot, not a problem. Figuring out what it's doing... that's a problem. Anyone got a chrono they want to lend me? I'll show it a good time. [Probably wont need return postage.]

LMAOH.. Guess a future project will be a cannon proof chrono.