Bytown Gunners restore a 17 pounder ATk Gun

[Gunner]

I decided to start dating the posts so it will be easier to follow progress.

This past Thursday night Ottawa was hit with another brief but intense snow storm... messy streets limited the team to just four, myself, two young Bombardiers (one is nicknamed "two-dads" due to his hyphenated name- yes Oz-men, we get your Sea Patrol TV show here! ). The fourth member of the team will be familiar to the Ottawa crowd, my old chum, Captain Graeme Milne. Graeme lives just around the corner from the new armoury so I have convinced him to come out.

Our photog was one of those folks snowed in so the photos in this post are actually from last week.

We have run up against a snag with getting the gun to traverse. We have lifted all the mechanisms and cut any obvious welds but the beast is firmly stuck. Looking over the diagrams carefully, we have either too much corrosion in the rollers and bearing surfaces (large wedge shaped arcs that the rollers, uh, roll on!) so the only thing left is to lift the shields and pull the gun and recoil mech. This will also allow us to take the tube and breech mechanism into our favourite welding shop where he has a 200 ton press that should pop the breech block out like a watermelon seed in a six year old's fingers!

To this end, Two-Dads and the other young fella removed the 20 one inch bolts that held the shield on while Graeme and I worked on the locking nut for the muzzle brake. The locking ring was seized tight to the breech-wards end of the threaded muzzle so we had to abuse it a bit to get it moving... it'll have to go to the welder to fix damage from several folks before Graeme and I including one unknown twit who used a cutting chisel on round holes!

The lads' job sounds a lot easier than it was... none of the 20 bolts were designed to have a ratchet put on them and even a thin walled box end wrench was a tight fit, so it was a steady hour and a half of 30 degree swings then resetting the wrench for anther 30 degree swing... we've all been there and its enough to try the patience of a Saint!

Putting two bolts back in so the shields don't fall on anyone during the next week left us with a bit of time to tackle the spades again. We managed to free the locking rings on the big pivot pins so we hope, next week, to drive the pins out and remove the spades.

Its amazing how much work we can get done in two to three hours each week. With disassembly nearly finished we will start cleaning and polishing what's been removed. Last week some of that was done so the photos show one of the lads at the degreaser cleaning gears and somewhat corroded shafts. Another shows the Master Gunner freeing up the extractors to help free the breech block and finally, the whole crew heaving on the barrel in an effort to pop the traverse loose... no luck! Our 25 pounder is visible in the background.

Well that's it for this week. Stay tuned for more adventures at Morrison Artillery Park.

Ubique! Mike