Salty asked:
> Cannonball Guy-or anyone else, can you tell me if they still used Saker cannons during the Rev War?
The answer is definitely No. Here is the main reason why:
In the Colonial era, casting iron cannons was in a very rudimentary (early, crude) stage. Casting small metal objects is not particularly complicated. But as they say, "The Devil is in the details." Casting a metal object which weighs hundreds (or thousands) of pounds is very difficult to get right.
Cast-iron is actually a quite brittle metal. When you apply "sudden" great force to cast-iron, it fractures fairly easily. Plumbers will tell you the simplest, quickest way to remove old cast-iron drainpipes under a house is to whack the pipe with a sledgehammer. No need to try to unscrew the pipe at the joints... just bust it up and put the pieces in a bucket. The brittleness of cast-iron is a very dangerous problem for the artillerymen who used cast-iron cannons... especially, the "early" ones. That is why in the Colonial era, brass or bronze cannons were preferred. (The copper in the alloy makes the brass or bronze "somewhat" flexible, and thus, better able to withstand the enormous internal pressure the cannon experiences when it is fired.)
Casting flaws, in the form of internal airbubbles -- which CANNOT be seen from the outside -- caused Colonial era CAST-IRON cannons to have serious inherent weakness. They tended to burst upon firing, due to the enormous blast-pressure inside the cannon's bore behind the cannonball... powerful enough to spit the ball for a mile.
Now, answering your question:
The "Art of Ironcasting" was always progressing. For example, around the 1840s, the Art of Ironcasting had progressed enough that internal casting-flaws had become the exception rather than commonplace in large cast-iron objects. Therefore, even by the time of the Revolutionary War, the "early Colonial-era" cannons such as the Saker and its kin were considered too dangerous, and were declared obsolete, withdrawn from service, and got melted down to make "modern" cannons.
That is also why although the RevWar 4-Pounder caliber smoothbore cannon is still listed in the 1861 US Ordnance Manual, none were used by either side in the civil war. Same with the obsolete 9-Pounder caliber... except for five 9-Pdrs. that desperate Confederates used for a short time early in the war in Tennessee.
There "may" have been a Saker or two still lingering in a distant, low-priority backwater fort, but neither the US nor British armies or navies used the Saker.
