Annandale cannon lovingly restored and back in place

It was a huge project that took nearly a year, but the Annandale cannon is completely restored and back in place at the intersection of Columbia Pike and Backlick Road.

Boy Scout Mark Witkowski worked on the cannon for a project to earn an Eagle Scout badge under the supervision of American Legion Post 1976 and a professional restorer at the M&M Collision auto body shop in Fairfax. Post 1976 is responsible for maintaining the cannon.

New wooden wheels were created by a wheelwright at the Witmer Coach Shop in New Holland, Pa., in Amish country.

The cannon – actually a three-inch field gun – was manufactured in 1905. It was used by the U.S. Army in the campaign against Mexican general Pancho Villa. In recent years, it has been deteriorating due to rust.

It took more than 400 hours to restore the cannon, says Eugene “Cornbread” Kimbrell, first vice commander of Post 1976, and now, “it’s looking pretty good for its age.” Post 1976 spent a little over $8,000 on the work, while M&M gave them a hefty discount. The cannon was back on its perch between Jiffy Lube and Walgreens for the Post’s Memorial Day ceremony.

Witkowski and a rotating team of about 10 Scouts spent nearly five months scraping the paint off the cannon at M&M. They started with hand scrapers, but that proved too slow, so they switched to a sandblaster and finished the work with Brillo pads and scraper brushes.

Witkowski is in Troop 1147, based at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Annandale. He is a junior at Fairfax High School and is working as a lifeguard at the Dowden Terrace Pool in Bailey’s Crossroads this summer. He hopes to have his Eagle Scout ceremony as soon as he completes the paperwork.

Daniel Sampson of M&M Collision, who mostly works on restoring antique cars, spent 11 months carrying out a complete restoration of the cannon.

He used an aircraft paint stripper on it, then pressure-washed it and scraped off the remaining bits of paint by hand. He did “serious metal fabrication” on the boxes, which he says probably contained fuses or the apparatus for firing the gun.

The paint he used, four coats of Army green, was made by PPG Paint, the same company that supplied paint to the military in World War II.

In what Sampson calls “a pretty astonishing coincidence,” he learned that the cannon was made at the U.S. Army’s Watervliet Arsenal in Watervliet, N.Y. – it’s stamped on the barrel – and that’s where his uncle, Joe Valerio, was stationed during World War II.

“It was a joy to do,” Sampson says of the cannon project. And don’t worry about anyone firing the cannon; everything is welded shut.