This article discusses how to get more out of your money…and your artillery sprues. With a little effort you can configure your artillery carriage to accept either a cannon barrel or a mortar barrel, allowing you to swap them out as you please.

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Ah, the ever-present decision… Do you make your artillery pieces into cannons or mortars? You could buy 8 sprues and put together 4 of each, just to make sure you can cover each scenario, or you could read on because this article is all about how do get more for your money. I am going to show you how to use simple pinning techniques to allow you to make modular artillery – and let you use the same carriage for either a cannon or a mortar. Two models for the price of one!

Materials Needed

The following list of materials is what I used to configure my artillery piece.

Pin Vise
File
Clippers
Hobby Knife
Wire
Glue

Building the Carriage

First of all, clip the pieces from the sprue and remove the mold lines – using a hobby knife and modeling files. Then, set the carriage up in the cannon configuration. This is because the mortar looks good on the cannon carriage, but not the converse. Next, using the pin vise, carefully drill a single hole into the center of each placement divot. Make the holes slightly larger than your wire dater, so that the pins can be removed easily later on.

The next step is to pin the restraining straps. You want to be very careful at this point to drill the hole in the restraining straps in the very center of the protrusion. Once the hole is drilled, cut a small length of wire and put a dab of glue on one end. Insert that end into the hole you just drilled in the restraining strap and let the glue dry. Once the glue is dry, test the fit of the straps on the carriage. You may need to slightly bend the pins for the best fit. Also, I had to trim the ends of the straps a bit to make the replacement smoother.

That’s all there is to it. Now all you have to do is paint up the individual pieces and when game time comes, simply pry up the straps and replace the barrel with the one you want. It’s easy!