SteamSewnEmpire Posted October 1, 2020 (edited) Hi all. I'm working on a new (much larger) ship, and while it will likely wind up being impossible to build given my limited resources, I like to do these things 'right' the first time, with all the little headaches worked out, just in case I ever come into money much later (and thus don't need to remember that there's XYZ that still needs to be sorted). One minor issue I am running into is with the cannons on the lower deck. While I am planning to use brick-built guns on the upper levels, I wanted to use Lego cannons just above the waterline to simulate a larger-bored weapon. The problem is pairing these with closing gunports - I'd like my gunports to actually be able to lower, and this means that the cannons, in turn, need to actually recoil slightly inside. With brick-built guns, this isn't that big a problem - if they wind up being too long, I can just pull the last piece off and close the gunport. You cannot do that with the stock cannons. I know about using 2653 + 32028, but this design isn't just stupidly bulky, it also sacrifices any hope of prototypical wheels. Since I want to be able to open the model and see display the guns, this isn't really a good solution. Similarly, I suppose I could just do free-rolling cannons, but then any time you'd even slightly move the ship, they'd be rolling all over the place. My guess is that someone over the years has come up with an ingenious solution to this problem, and rather than squandering 2-3 hours trying to reinvent the wheel, I was wondering if anyone had anything to share that would help? Thanks. ****edit**** Nevermind... I managed to combine the two. This isn't the world's greatest solution, but I think it will at least work in this instance: Edited October 1, 2020 by SteamSewnEmpire Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Elusys Ra Arwal Posted October 1, 2020 (edited) Your solution could be a viable one, with that sliding mechanism underneath the cannon. The only problem I see is that you're going to use many more pieces to build it, while you could simply do what has been done for centuries on real ships, just to avoid having guns running everywhere. You should use ropes, give it enough slack so you can push it all the way back and still be able to push it out when you open the gun ports. I did something like that on my ship, but with custom cannons. Here's what I did: 48905917348_afc35529f5_b.jpg (1024×576) (staticflickr.com) As you can see, on the ship wall I used those white modified plates 4081b where I will attach the ropes and have a loop around the back of the cannon, something like this: https://www.hobbies.co.uk/userdata/root/images/ms4005cannon3.jpg you can see the white rope attached to the wall and around the cannon, of course I won't insert any of those pulleys because there's no room for that, but the main rope will be good enough to hold the cannon in place and to not have it running around. That being the case if you don't make your ship sides detachable, then everything I said won't work anymore and you'll have to go back to either your idea or another one. NB. for some reason my images don't show up in the message... Edited October 1, 2020 by Elusys Ra Arwal Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
