Subject: Re: gun barrel drilling? -Reply

From: [email-masked]
Date: 5 Jun 1996 07:19:07 -0400

The forging and drilling and rifling of a gun barrel are covered in the
book "Foxfire 5."  As for buying barrels several good commercial barrels
can be bought through several different different catalogs, Dixie gun
works, Mountain state muzzleloading, Log cabin gun shop.  You can also
pick up several different gun barrels at the National muzzleloading rifle
association spring shoot in Friendship, In. this weekend June 8, 1996. 
The only question after you decide what caliber is what type of barrel
are you looking for?  The outside of the barrel can be straight octagon,
tapered octagon, swamped octogon, octagon to round, round.  Every
thing you need to build a rifle modern to antique firearms can be bought
at Friendship, In.

>>> [email-masked] (Russ Kepler) 06/03/96 12:25pm >>>
In article <[email-masked]>,
Bruce Conner <[email-masked]> wrote:
>So, anybody know in detail how to do this job?  I know about gun drills
>but there have to be a lot of tricks and kinks to using them and getting
>everything to go smoothly.

Gun drilling is usually done horizontally with oil or other lube under
pressure through the drill bit.  The drill bit is an oddly shaped bit
and is stationary with the material being turned.

Drilling, however is only the first stage.  You then have to ream or
otherwise polish to the land diameter, or a diameter slightly below
depending on how you're planning of rifling the barrel.

Rifling is done either by using the traditional "hook" cutter or
through button rifling.  A hook cutter is a cutter shaped somewhat
like a hook mounted on a bore filling plug.  The cutter take off as
little as .0001" per pass, the cutter being indexed through the number
of grooves before being adjusted to the next cut depth.  While the
cutter is being drawn through the blank it is given the proper
rotation to form the desired twist.

In button rifling a carbide button is formed with grooves for the
lands it will form and lands for the grooves it will form.  It is then
slightly oversize for the bore, forming the lands and grooves while
being drawn through the barrel under hydraulic power.

So gundrilling is just the start of the process, and really not that
much of the total effort.  I'd just buy a barrel from a reputable
maker myself.

-- 
Russ Kepler posting from home  [email-masked]

                      Please don't feed the Engineers

---

From: [email-masked] (darylb)
Date: 10 Jun 1996 20:44:08 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] wrote:
...snip The outside of the barrel can be straight octagon,
> thing you need to build a rifle modern to antique firearms can be bought

If you forge weld up your barrel around the mandrel then how do you get
the octagon exterior without causing your rough barrel "bore" to close up
(become solid)? If it does, whats the point of forge welding it in the
first place?

Now confused
Daryl

---

From: [email-masked] (Roy Parker)
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 01:04:29 GMT

>(become solid)? If it does, whats the point of forge welding it in the

The flats are filed onto the barrel.  You have a (semi) round barrel,
and just file away everything that is not octagon.  Kinda like making
a statue, you start with a block of stone, and chip away everything
but the statue.  Truth!  That's how they made them.  Most of the
barrel makers straightened the barrels (via bending or hammer blows)
after the bore was reamed, but before rifling.

Check out the various Books of Buckskinning for more info.

Roy

Roy Parker--Buckskinner, brewer, and semi-handyman
Booshway, 1998 SW Regional Rendezvous.  Houston, Texas
[email-masked]  [email-masked]