does anyone have information on this tool

shanemward · Jun 26, 2021

I found what is supposed to be a bore gauge in an old retired machinists tool room, he worked on project HARP under Gerald Bull, i hope you can see the pictures i attached but it has "U.S Navy bu. of ord. , FLEET STAR GAGE MK.8 MOD 1 "stamped on it serial number 280 , looks like its made by a company called KOBE INC.

id love to know where i could find diagrams of it to see what parts i seem to be missing and hopefully find those parts.

Shane W.

David_M · Jun 26, 2021

Project HARP: самая большая пушка в мире | World biggest cannon (Gerald Bull space gun) - YouTube

shanemward · Jun 26, 2021

sadly the video doesnt say anything about the bore gauge , all the guns are still there in various stages of decay , if anyone wants to start a trust to help me preserve their history that would be heaps of fun ....LOL , on another note, i cant find any information on that bore guage ANYWHERE on the internet.....makes me wonder what about it is so special...other than the fact that it measured the bores on 16 inch naval guns , i have a complete set of "standards" too , i believe it goes all the way up to an 18 inch bore, i have not openened the boxes fully yet

SIP6A · Jun 26, 2021

A star gage is used to measure the bore of a large caliber gun. A gun barrel has a life before it gets shot out. The bore would be periodically be check for wear . When it was shot out to the high limit it was swapped out for a new or reconditioned barrel.

Looks like the Barbados salt air wasn't very kind to it.

There are two books about Gerald Bull's life. Bull's eye by James Adams and Arms and the man by William Lowther. I have read both books and feel the one by Adams is the better of the two. His lifelong goal was to launch a satellite with a gun That work started in Barbados. Towards the end of his life he was working for Saddam Hussein to build an artillery piece that could strike Israel from Iraq. Before it was finished he was murdered by the Israeli intelligence service.

sfriedberg · Jun 26, 2021

shanemward said:
makes me wonder what about it is so special

Let me be Captain Obvious. 15-18" guns are not commodity items. In fact, I doubt there were ever as many as 100 all of the same type. The ones the US Navy put on our WW II battleships were actually produced in the WW I time frame, and stored when the ships they were originally intended for never got built. The special tools, including gaging, for these things are even less common than the guns themselves. It's quite possible there was never more than 4 or 5 copies of that gage made. Even possible there was only one made.

So you're not going to find a user's manual or a grainy WW II documentary or propaganda film telling you all about that gage. There were probably only 20 or 30 people who used it during the decades it was useful.

Depending on your attitude, it's a "precious piece of history" or a "bunch of obsolete junk". You decide.

[Added in edit] The fact that this gage ended up with Project HARP is probably more interesting than anything else about it.

SIP6A · Jun 26, 2021

I believe This is the book you want to get to read about star gages. I had a copy and sold it. It's a wonderful book to read about the manufacture of naval ordnance.

Naval Ordnance: A Text-Book Prepared for the Use of the Midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy

Published by The United States Naval Institute.

thermite · Jun 26, 2021

shanemward said:
sadly the video doesnt say anything about the bore gauge , all the guns are still there in various stages of decay , if anyone wants to start a trust to help me preserve their history that would be heaps of fun ....LOL , on another note, i cant find any information on that bore guage ANYWHERE on the internet.....makes me wonder what about it is so special...other than the fact that it measured the bores on 16 inch naval guns , i have a complete set of "standards" too , i believe it goes all the way up to an 18 inch bore, i have not openened the boxes fully yet

It might go to over 20"?

The bore LINER was 16" nominal. but the tube was a composite structure.

Dahlgren had (at least) ONE "modern" 18" bore built for testing AFAIK.

The extra mass of the turret it would have required would have made the BB hulls too large to transit the Panama Canal.

The USN had already upped the striking power of the 16"-45 Mark 6 and 16"-50 Mark 7 with a "super heavy" projectile. A turret barbette armor face glacis plate built for IJN "Shinano" before conversion to a carrier was hauled back from Japan at war's end.

The 16"-45 mark 6 shredded it:

History and Technology - Ballistic Tests on the IJN Shinano's Turret Face Armor - NavWeaps

The Mark 7 could clear a decent assault helico-popter LZ out of standing jungle with a single round:

USA 16"/50 (40.6 cm) Mark 7 - NavWeaps

shanemward · Jun 26, 2021

yeah that was kinda intended as sarcasm, i know its part of a very small group of similar pieces although i didnt know it was THAT old , i dont know how to categorize it , it may still measure bores but accuracy would be questionable but i got it for nearly free so i guess its no big loss, thanks for the information

shanemward · Jun 26, 2021

no the salt air environment has been has on all his equipment i also got a starett 1 - 12 micrometer set but thats nothing to shout about , he also has two lathes that would have made the martlets , one still has a pattern bolted to a frame on the back of the lathe that the cross slide would have followed to make a shape , the pattern looks to be of a smaller caliber shell , im not shure,

thermite · Jun 26, 2021

shanemward said:
no the salt air environment has been has on all his equipment i also got a starett 1 - 12 micrometer set but thats nothing to shout about , he also has two lathes that would have made the martlets , one still has a pattern bolted to a frame on the back of the lathe that the cross slide would have followed to make a shape , the pattern looks to be of a smaller caliber shell , im not shure,

Not on Barbados, anyway. IIRC "Shure" brothers made audio transducers out of a factory in Chicago, US State of (perpetually...) Ill and Annoy.

My old "Day job" firm was buying their products for Hearing Aids up until the 1970's.

As to naval-gazing?:

Me 4' 10" Liverpudlian G'Mum briefly operated a turret lathe, War One, that very probably might have had a mechanical guide template as well.

Her tasking? "Making the little pointy thing that goes on the nose!"

.. of the projectiles for the Royal Navy "main battery" heavy guns of the era.

1yesca · Jun 26, 2021

its to bad that the u.s. did not fund him to finish his work as i would rather see my tax money spent on projects like his then some commie professor wasting it on some bogus grant about the sex life of gay flea's . i am also not a big fan of the bagel eaters [outside of Israel] but i don't blame Israeli's for doing what they did as they warned him to stop doing what he was doing but he could not as it was in his blood it was his baby and he wanted to see if it would work . the thing i do like about Israel is they know that if they are to survive it all on them no mater what any outsider has to say . they don't focus on the problem just the solution even if its the final solution .

old_dave · Jun 27, 2021

SIP6A said:
A star gage is used to measure the bore of a large caliber gun. A gun barrel has a life before it gets shot out. The bore would be periodically be check for wear . When it was shot out to the high limit it was swapped out for a new or reconditioned barrel.

Looks like the Barbados salt air wasn't very kind to it.

There are two books about Gerald Bull's life. Bull's eye by James Adams and Arms and the man by William Lowther. I have read both books and feel the one by Adams is the better of the two. His lifelong goal was to launch a satellite with a gun That work started in Barbados. Towards the end of his life he was working for Saddam Hussein to build an artillery piece that could strike Israel from Iraq. Before it was finished he was murdered by the Israeli intelligence service.

Battleship gun barrels had liners, that was what was rifled and what would have been replaced,

Have a hunch that's what you meant.
David

dalmatiangirl61 · Jun 27, 2021

I'm kind of surprised the US government let Bull take that barrel out of the country, and how do you get permission to launch things that high, did they block off an area of the ocean to aircraft and boats?

I got to see the SHARP cannon once, it was pretty damn cool.
SHARP

John Hunter was working on a larger cannon, iirc it was going to be a little bigger than the one Bull made for Saddam, just to say he had the biggest, lol. I could have sworn it was built, but not finding any info on it, so not sure.

thermite · Jun 27, 2021

dalmatiangirl61 said:
I'm kind of surprised the US government let Bull take that barrel out of the country, and how do you get permission to launch things that high, did they block off an area of the ocean to aircraft and boats?

Whaddyah mean "let"?

HARP was a joint US DoD / Canadian DnD Government project!

Barbados positioned the gun closer to the equator than Yuma, AZ.
Which still holds the altitude record, FWIW.

SIP6A · Jun 27, 2021

old_dave said:
Battleship gun barrels had liners, that was what was rifled and what would have been replaced.David

That's true but that wouldn't have been done at the shipyard.

SIP6A · Jun 27, 2021

shanemward said:
no the salt air environment has been has on all his equipment i also got a starett 1 - 12 micrometer set but thats nothing to shout about , he also has two lathes that would have made the martlets , one still has a pattern bolted to a frame on the back of the lathe that the cross slide would have followed to make a shape , the pattern looks to be of a smaller caliber shell , im not shure,

Could you get some photos of what's left and post them. Everybody would find them interesting.

shanemward · Jun 27, 2021

it was a joint U.S DOD / Canadian DND project for most of its life until von braun and his people started making leaps in rocket technology at which point funding faded away because nothing very sizeable could be launched from the gun (spy satellites etc.) and the extreme G forges gave electronics a very hard time, after the funding from governments ran out he started the Space Research Corporation , that would have be around 1967. the SRC took over the HARP site and he began manufacturing guns and ammunition down there to sell in south Africa and god knows who else he sold to, the site was active for a while after the big gun stopped firing and when the Barbadian Government discovered he was supplying arms to the apartheid regime in south africa, they forced him out of the island and pushed a good lot of the smaller machinery over the cliff, only 3 lathes and 2 milling machines survived, but the guy im getting the stuff from still has all the drawings for the martlets, their wooden salvo casings and mulitple other shell designs although im shure most of it is now obsolete and worthless , he tells of turning the guns from rifled into smooth bore guns with a boring tool , very interesting to go and have a glass of whisky with the man and ya learn alot

shanemward · Jun 27, 2021

shure , i could take some pictures, im buying the whole stash anyhow...slowly lol

shanemward · Jun 27, 2021

View attachment 323598 View attachment 323599 View attachment 323600 View attachment 323601

here are some pictures of the two lathes he has left , i don't know if the copymatic on the saddle of the lodge & shipley is a common feature or not , and the leblond looks like it was specially built for a Canadian arms division or something ,just going by the nameplates but it does not have a leadscrew so i assume it was designed for a specific job, i have a few more detailed pictures of the lathes if anyone is interested.

thermite · Jun 27, 2021

SIP6A said:
That's true but that wouldn't have been done at the shipyard.

Neville Island, Pittsburgh, PA, "Dravo" corporation & similar - did BB prop shafts and naval rifle tubes. Double-header barges took the longer ones to N'Orleans, then up the East Coast to the Navy yards.

One of their lathes had, IIRC, a 110-foot modular bed, two carriages, and over a 100-inch swing.

Swing was no big deal, but there were only a few other lathes of that length capacity in the whole country, All of them custom built at gnormous cost just for the soils work for base preparation and "reasonable" ability to hold alignment - even with constant re-alignment checking and "tuning".

To the good, the Allegheny mountains are among the OLDEST and most geologically stable on the planet. West Virginia's "New" and Gauley rivers run through a portion of what is now Africa's "Great Rift valley" that was last contiguous back in the Pangea / Gondwanaland geological continental epochs.

"Younger" Rockies and West Coast ranges are way to Hell and gone more seismically ACTIVE.. which is a challenge to basing machinery in those sizes.

does anyone have information on this tool

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