THE EIGHTY-ONE-TON GUN.

Patea Mail, Volume I, Issue 68, 11 December 1875, Page 3

THE EIGHTY-ONE-TON GUN.

(fiiom thk home news.) The 81-ton gun was tried with charges increasing gradually from 170 to 240 llis of pebble-powder. The results were so successful as to confinn many of the leading engineers and artillerists in the belief that it will bo perfectly practical)!” to make guns twice as large and twice as powerful as that which has been triumphantly put to the proof. Gnus of 120, or from that up to 100 tons, throwing a ton of metal at every shot, and, at the distance of a mile, rending the side of an iron-clad with a fissure as large as that which would be made by the ram of the Iron Duke. The 81-ton gun is 27 feet long on the outside, and has a 24-feet bore, the diameter of which is 14-i- inches, or a trilie more, to allow windage in emitting a projectile of that same gauge. Externally the gun varies in diameter from two feet at the muzzle to about six feet at the breech. It is in contemplation to increase the bore to J 1 inches, since the proper calibre has been found by experiment to be, so high. The rifling is in eleven grooves, and the spiral increases from the powder-chain her till the shot leaves the muzzle at a twist of one in thirty-five, having scarcely turned once on its axis inside the boro. This, however, has been proved ample to give it tbe necessary rotation to the end of its journey. The gun lias been constructed for eight separate wronghtiron coils, fitted and shrunk one into the other on the Woolwich or Fraser system, which lias for several years been adopted in the manufacture of all English ordnance, and is one which, although professedly discredited by most of the great powers in favor of steel or bronze, is known to be at the present time extensively taken up by several great European nations. A period of about fourteen months has sufficed for the making of this gun ; and in that time some of our most distinguished visitors have watched its progress.