Cannon Conversions
Our latest article from Billy Hill is on cannon conversions. Billy shows how he took some generic cannons and through his cannon conversions makes them more interesting. .
Hing Fat pirate and ACW playsets come rather generously supplied with somewhat peculiar cannon of 2 different types: huge muzzleloaders with very simple carriages and smaller cannon copied from the small gun that came with Marx vehicle sets. These last have wagon wheels in place ot the tires that the Marx cannon came with. At first, I just set these cannon aside, but after reflection I decided that it would be a waste not to make use of them.
I had a plentiful supply of them so I decided to experiment. I decided to use the barrels from the large cannon to make some ACW style siege guns. I sawed the sides off of the original carriages and built new frames from balsa wood. I sawed the original trunions off from the barrel and replaced them with new ones in the correct position, using a length of wooden dowel.
The cap squares were made from bits of plastic card and tubing and the carriage bolts were simulated using straight pins. The result does not represent a specific model, but I feel it captures the flavor and spirit well enough for a toy battle.
The second cannon conversions was much simpler. A number of breechloading field guns made an appearance, around the beginning of the 20th century. A common feature of many were spoked wheels and a metal gunshield. I decided to represent a Japanese mountain gun of WW2, but any number of variations can be made by varying the shape of the gunshield. The famous French 75 leaps immediately to mind. I researched my subject on the internet and hand drew a pattern for the shield on graph paper, then cut it out of plastic card, using bits of paper clip wire for braces. Again, it’s not an accurate scale model, but it fills the space in my toy collection quite nicely with very little effort.
Ingenious, nice work.
This is getting to be quite impressive.
I agree, some innovative stuff; I appreciate the wealth of ideas you are providing.
Thanks guys!
It’s an impressive conversion because those ridiculous Hing Fat-type cannon looked like a gun tube strapped to a skateboard, and were so unrealistically silly looking they were unusable in a set-up for any historical period. Now we know that just about anything can be salvaged or converted into something useful.
I should have said “…. anything can be salvaged or converted into something useful with some imagination and artistic talent.”
Way to go, Bill. I am going to tackle the big cannons soon. You did great. That’s probably more effort than I will. I’ve been using the little cannons as towed AT guns for years.
What is the original cannon of the second picture (tan cannon), I have some of these cannons that came with an American Civil War wag, but I Know these are not from the Civil War. I need to know so I can paint them historically accurate, Thank you in advance.