I've baked a cannon!

It's trouble getting enough cannon for my Napoleonic troops. These sets are the most expensive, and often contain a few cannon only - or if they have enough cannon, there are no horse teams and limbers at all.
To remedy this, I have bought a pack of sculpey and made this prototype, an Austrian cavalry artillery 6-pounder. The pieces made from sculpey are the barrel, the wurst and the rims of the two wheels.



The figures are part of the ACW lot, originally bought / gifted to me for the Nova Hungaria project, with their headwear and firearms replaced, and a frock tail added to their vests. The third one, a Strelets representation of General Grant as I found out, wears a Corsican hat and a more civilian-looking attire.

I have built cannon barrels using GS before, it's rather easy to create a more crude one. This barrel has some detail on it, but nothing fancy. As the core of the barrel itself was not completely solid, I could use the time baking the details on it to make it more so.

Wheels are rather difficult to build from any material. I have used paper and PVA - a universal and cheap course, but rims made like this cannot be very well detailed. Then there's the choice of making a master from a plastic wheel and casting more in metal - I lack the facilities for this. 

Even with sculpey, one has to be very careful. I've burned the first pair pitch black, so after that experiment I've only shaped the rims and baked them at a low temperature for 10 minutes. I've got two more pairs completed, I think I'll use them to build a limber and an ammunition wagon. 

The wheels require a very little amount of sculpey to make, in a very little time, therefore they're quite cost-effective; the spokes on this gun were made from pine sticks and glued on with superglue gel once the rim had cooled off. 

The non-sculpey parts are made from pine wood, toothpick and cardstock. The gun was painted using the standard method of block - brown wash - highlight, followed by two more layers of highlight on the yellows.