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barrel boring and rifling

Joined
Mar 17, 2007
Location
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
hello i am new to the forum. i recenty just purchased a 16 x 8 hendey gearhead lathe. i have pretty good machining experience but it was all hands on learned from trial and error by making almost every part imaginable for my chopper. now i am intrested in custom making some guns. i want to make a double barrel stainless shotgun, a some rifle barrels. i do not know were to look for internal gun parts and schematics and how to put the rifling in a barrel. If any body has any advice please share it with me because i am a beginner at gunsmithing.

thanks jason
 
Barrel rifling and boring are a bit of an art in their own right.

Most guys just buy a barrel. If you get a Brownell's catalog, you will find that even at full retail, a good grade barrel is pretty inexpensive. Otherwise, you could well spend the next few years of free time truing to build the equipment, or spend far more money on buying the equipment to carry out the same job.

What's your bubget like? Thereare a pile of books out there that detail various types of firearms, though few are of the "read the print, make the part" type.

Frank DeHaas has a line of books that details the internals of a lot of single shot rifles. There is a book out there on converting Double shotguns into double rifles. There is another line of badly written books that have quite a bit of good info, and some that is not so good, by on H Hoffman.

Look around the web a bit. There was some blueprints for the Winchester model 21 double on one of the collector club sites, a while back. I have not looked for them in a while, so they may or may not still be up.

Do a web search for Border Barrels. They have a little rundown on the methods ued that is a good read.
Guy Lautard sells a video and some paperwork that details a barrel drilling and boring machine. It is an interesting watch if nothing else.

Cheers
Trevor Jones
 
I agree with the others. I make cut-rifled barrels myself, and our shop makes double-rifles from shotgun actions or from scratch, custom BIG-BORE revolvers etc. You can modify an old lathe to ream the barrels relatively easy, but to make a cut-rifler by way of a sine bar, or CNC indexer is going to cost you more than your house.
Purchase the rifled blanks from a catalogue, chamber ream them or take them to a qualified local 'advanced' gunsmith for them to put it on your action. Gunsmithing is an art, and without having an experienced 'smith show you the ropes, it will be a VERY expensive learning curve even if you are an accomplished machinist.
If you can't find what you need locally e-mail me, yankeemetallic AT sbcglobal.net or visit the shop website www.jrhgunmaker.com (although Jack Huntington's website has been down a lot lately) and we'll see what we can do for you.
 
The subject of making rifle barrels comes up several times a year here and there are a number of threads in the archives that discuss it. Read this article about Border Barrels for a description of the barrel making process. It is not the part of the gun trade that one should begin with.
 
WOW I NEVER KNEW IT WAS THAT HARD. i would love to build my own double barrel shotgun so what would be the best way to start. i really appericate all of the time that was put into the responses i got, all of you are a real class act.
 
Why don't you come to Colonial Williamsburg.Va.,and go to the gunsmith's shop.They do it entirely by hand with a wooden rifling jig.Of course,it takes about 600 pulls to rifle a barrel their way.They are cutting deep grooves for black powder,of course.The barrels are hand forged from genuine wrought iron.
 
I have a rifling machine of the sinebar type that was custom build for rifling muzzleloader barrels. I'd have trouble with real fast twist, but for 1in 20 all the way up to 1 in 80 twist or slower it works great. It took me two evenings to rifle a .50 cal barrel last week. 8 grooves, .010" deep. It took MANY passes, scrubbing the cutter, relubing with bear grease.... Still have to lap it out to clean it up.
 
"I have a rifling machine of the sinebar type that was custom build for rifling muzzleloader barrels."

Pictures, pictures!!
 
I can probably get a few pics up in a couple weeks. I'll be away on the road for the next week or so, and I just haven't had the time. I'd be happy to share them with you though. It really is a pretty simple machine and now that I have a lathe and am looking at purchasing a mill I might just build another one that might work for centerfire rifle bores, basically just a machine capable of a faster twist.
 
Here is a recent thread on making a sine bar rifling machine. It is oriented towards rifling small scale cannon barrels (1 inch diameter) but could be used for small arms barrels, too.
 
I know where you can get a Sine Bar rifler that is for sale. I will not post it here but if you want more info please PM me. I only ask that you be a serious buyer so it is not a waste of my time. Price with a lathe modified for deep hole drilling and reaming, $30 K.
 








 
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