Claymore Castings Russian 3-pound Cannon

 

Russian light 3-pound cannon from Claymore Castings

I was very excited to hear that Claymore Castings (David Imrie - see Saxon Dog blog) decided to add that unique Russian 3-pound field artillery piece that featured the regular gun tube plus two small coehorn style mortars attached to the gun carriage. I had only ever seen one model of this gun ever made, that in HO scale (20mm) by Zvezda. I had also heard about a metal model made by some obscure company in Austria, but I had never seen a picture of it.

Here is Christopher Duffy's take on the Russian 3-pounder, or more specifically, the mortars:

The Blizniatki were tiny field mortars, cast two-and-two together, designed by the artillery officer Mikhail Vasilevich Danilov after he had read Saint-Remy's "Memories d'Artillery". Great quantities were sent to the army in 1757, but they were soon discarded as useless.

That may be, but if you have a Russian SYW war game army you have to have these models in your army.

Christian Rogge has an excellent blog in which he covers his own scratch built SYW artillery models. Christian details his work on Russian artillery models in the following link:

Christian Rogge's SYW Blog

As you can see from the pictures that I am posting, the 3-pounder has a forked gun trail that allows it to be pulled by a team of two horses without using a limber. This presumably would have given the piece more mobility than, say, an Austrian or Prussian 3-pounder that would need their own limbers.

A front view of the Russian 3-pounder shows the two small mortars mounted on the gun carriage near the axle.

The Claymore Castings model with a Minden limber horse. The Minden officer figure
is shown for comparative purpose.

The Claymore Castings model is nicely done and the castings are clean and do not require any clean up work prior to priming and painting. They seem a tad large relative to Minden Miniatures figures, but then David has sized these pieces to fit with his own SYW Russian and Prussian figures. The company makes two versions of the Russian 3-pounder: large and small. I believe that models that I bought were the large versions and I have one small version on order so that I can compared the sizes of the two versions. I would point out that from my experience in standing next to cannon wheels from a variety of historical figures, my shoulders are approximately the same height as the wheel on 3/6/12 pound artillery pieces. So I believe that the scale of the Claymore Castings model is appropriate for any 28mm figure.

Here is a link to the Claymore web site. Click on the SYW pull down menu to look at the various offerings for the Russian and Prussian armies. They are very nice figures and look to be "Perry size" in style and height. I am very appreciative of David adding these Russian cannon to his figure range as they fill a definite need in the 28mm SYW universe. I am not planning on adding the Russian 3-pounder to the Minden Miniatures range because the Claymore Castings model is a good one and you might as well purchase their cannon model rather than me offering a redundant model.

Claymore Castings

My opinion: I give my highest recommendation to the Claymore Castings artillery models.

Here are a couple pictures of the Claymore Casting Russian 3-pounder model  with some Minden Russian artillery crew. To my eye the two should fit together quite nicely.

Here are a pair of artillery munitions wagons, made for me by Mr. Ed Phillips.
The painted scene on the 4-wheel lid depicts a blacksmith at his forge, so maybe
this version was used by the army's blacksmiths and field forge units.

I am currently working on the painting of 24 of the new Minden Miniatures Russian Cuirassiers and I should have them ready for photography later this week. They will come in handy when I play Phase 3 of the all-cavalry battle, as the heavy cavalry of both sides enters the battle.

Click on the link below if you have an interest in adding Minden Russian cuirassiers to your Russian armies.

Minden Miniatures Russians

My plan is to add some Cossacks to the Minden range in the near future. Steve Barber, who sculpted the entire Minden Russian army set of figures, will be the sculptor for the Cossacks. There will likely be mounted and dismounted versions of the Cossacks. I will post more information on this new project as it develops.