An Cosantóir the official magazine of the Irish Defence Forces and Reserve Defence Forces.
Issue link: https://digital.jmpublishing.ie/i/1475914
26 9168 AT ITS BEST THE ORDNANCE CORPS' RESTORATION OF 18-POUNDER FIELD GUN 9168 AT ITS BEST THE ORDNANCE CORPS' RESTORATION OF 18-POUNDER FIELD GUN By Sgt Robert Delaney Photos By Airman Sam Gibney After thousands of hours of work, the restora- tion of Quick Firing 18-pounder field gun serial number 9168 – featured in An Cosantóir, April 2018 - is complete. The work involved almost every asset of the Ordnance Base Workshops and it drew on the unit's broad technical ex- pertise. The artillery piece is to be displayed in the National Museum for a period from August 2022 before taking up residency in the Curragh Museum. The restoration project has been unlike any- thing undertaken to date in the Defence Forc- es and it was guided by an ethos that placed a huge emphasis on the preservation of the artefact. It will be remembered that the artil- lery piece was brought back from the United States in 2017, where fifty years outside in the Virginian climate, took its toll. 9168 was ter- ribly corroded and Ordnance Corps artificers had great difficulty dismantling the gun. Be- cause of the poor condition, great care had to be taken during disassembly to ensure that as much of the original field gun as possible was saved for the rebuild. Rust and corrosion had to be removed and as parts and assemblies were cleaned and prepared for reuse, a pro- gramme of treatment was devised to ensure that any residual moisture was eradicated from the metal to stem further deterioration. The work that was done on the 18-pounder's shield perhaps best sums up the approach taken during the project. The wooden slats that were once fixed to the front of the shield to strengthen it, had long rotted away but the rivets that held them in place remained. Whilst the easiest solution would have been to use new rivets to fix the replacement slats to the restored gun, the ethos of the project demanded that a less destructive method be adopted, and new wooden slats were shaped to fit around the curve of the shield and the one-hundred-year-old rivets. OBW carpenters 18 Pounder field gun as found in the USA On arrival in OBW Fully Restored