- Location
- Ottawa Ontario
Like most of you here on the forum, I've been knocking around the firearms hobby for many years, and know full well, cleaning and restoration is absolute sacrilege when it comes to antiques. This being said, would a cannon fall into the same category? I recently acquired a 16' 1/2 inch 25lb signal cannon that I'd like to display in my house. Being cast iron, it has rust and pitting, but otherwise it's quite solid. I plan on building a basic naval carriage and plopping it right in front of my fireplace. Should the cannon be cleaned up and painted or just left as is? I was thinking of taking it into my shop and shot blasting it, glazing the pitting with automotive polyester putty, smoothing everything out, giving it a good coat of epoxy primer and finishing it in a semi gloss single stage paint. I also thought of giving it the ole cast iron skillet treatment with cooking oil and sticking it in the oven for a couple hours to neutralize the rust and condition the iron so it could @ least be handled without leaving a mess. My Newfoundland brain works in mysterious ways. What say you? I'm not set up for posting pics, but will gladly send a couple to an email if someone wants to see the condition.
