Somebody has to do it!

For many years my only infraction on the boards was a thread removed for giving the URL to an eBay auction - without the slightest intention to promote it, but more as something to avoid. So I had better not do it again.

But a couple of Chinese sellers are now offering button-rifling setups and buttons. I don't think the complete machine is worth buying, with the postage from China on what is principally just an ordinary ten ton car jack. But the buttons, which are high speed steel and titanium nitride coated, look very useful. They are meant to be self-guided, not by rotation of the operating rod.

They are flat on the ends, and meant to be pushed, not pulled as I, without the slightest experience, feel would be preferable. Being HSS, not carbide, they would lose hardness if brazed to a pulling rod, and perhaps also with any silver solder that would hold. The device holds the barrel in a collet, and I believe the intention is to stop and shift it again and again if you are rifling more than a pistol barrel. This, I feel, could cause irregularity at best, and perhaps finding the tool immobile where it has stopped.

Even doing it just the way they suggest, I would be happier using an Enerpac general-purpose cylinder, or one of the cheaper clones. they come in up to about a 15in. stroke. Or for a long pulling action, you could get an extremely long cylinder from earth moving equipment etc. Or even do it with no hydraulics at all, using the old dodge of a right-hand and a left-hand thread of slightly different pitches, to exert enormous force as one screws just a trace faster than the other unscrews.

If the bore of your barrel is one for which hydraulic seals are available, you could even have the operating rod going inside an extremely long home-made cylinder. How to avoid it buckling if it is pushed? Pure speculation again, but you could have a series of close-fitting steel collars inside the cylinder, held apart by weak coilsprings. I believe lubricants are critical in button rifling, but one suited to case sizing, such as STP oil treatment, seems likely to work.

When we consider how the top barrelmakers vie for supremacy in the field, you are unlikely to step up there any time soon. But for the restoration to life of an antique or cherished heirloom, this could be a very good deal.

I wonder whether they offer a button that will cut a .313 groove diameter with a 1-10 or 1-12" twist? That would be great for recutting old S&W barrels in 22 LR to make 32 H&R and 32 FM barrels. Would you be so kind as to PM me with the URL for this?

TIA ~ Froggie

That part about stopping the button may limit how long a barrel it will do, when researching rifling with the possibility of doing it in my home shop it was stressed by more than one that once that button enters the bore it's extremely important to keep it moving until it exits. If I understood correctly if the button stops in the bore it will seize and it's not likely to start moving again!

BTW, I just gave up on the idea of rifling my own barrels but it sure would be interesting if someone does it and shares their experience with us!

There is a YouTube video on making and rifling your own barrel that sounds very similar to what you describe. All I will say is that after working in a tool and die shop and being a part time gunsmith for about 30 years, I was not impressed

Sounds too complicated for an old retired Biologist like me! :coffeecom

Froggie

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Originally Posted by Green Frog

I wonder whether they offer a button that will cut a .313 groove diameter with a 1-10 or 1-12" twist? That would be great for recutting old S&W barrels in 22 LR to make 32 H&R and 32 FM barrels. Would you be so kind as to PM me with the URL for this?

TIA ~ Froggie

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It's done. They state .311 for a .30 bore, which sounds useful, and not even that for most of the others. Nor do they quote twists. But it sounds to me that unlike some Chinese sellers who are middle-men dealing in tooling that they don't understand, they know their subject and can answer questions.

Clearly they do intend people to keep stopping and starting the process, dropping in additional ejector rods - which in this context doesn't mean pushing anything out, but pushing the button further in. I suppose they know what they are doing, but it might that lapping would help even things up.

Nearly fifty years ago,I worked for a shop doing button rifling,...at that time the lube used was a low temp glass,or so claimed....nowdays hobbyists actually using ebay buttons use a mix of Loctite silver antiseize and superfine MoS2......Its also known that variations in pitch are very bad for accuracy.....hence a guided button setup is required......pushing requires carbide rod for stiffness,pulling needs a joining of rod and button.....Bore size is critical,and honing to tenth accuracy necessary....as to machinery,S/H hydraulic stuff is very cheap,scrap price even.....But I think anyone with a couple of years machining experience would be able to produce sucessful results.....I have even heard of the pulling force provided by a forklift.....but 10 ton lift is a biggish forklift....an old hydraulic ram,and a bit of steel framing would be a lot cheaper initially.......Incidentally,most CNC machining centres can be used to rifle a barrel to 5"long,without any special tooling.

I hear that in the early days at least, copper plating of the bore was sometimes used to reduce friction. Whether this means genuine electroplating or the less bonded copper film you can easily achieve with copper sulphate and a low current, I don't know.

I don't believe variations in pitch are invariably harmful to accuracy. A progressive or gain twist certainly isn't, if it is done well, and I can't see why a reducing but smoothly degressive twist would be, if the initial twist wasn't enough to cause stripping or leading, and the final twist was enough for stabilisation. What I think is meant there is a sudden change in twist, even a minor one. Now how is a tool with its blades riding in grooves it has created, going to do that? There is torsional elasticity in a rotating operating rod, and if the movement is stopped and started, that might be more likely, if anything, than an unconnected tool to produce inconsistency. Having the barrel free to rotate on a large axial ball bearing, which the eBay setup doesn't, should help.

Similarly in a way, I can well believe in disaster if the bore were that tenth of a thousandth smaller than the pilot of the tool. But a thousandth or so oversize? I believe that could only make the rifling uneven in depth.I can give you figures for that, with a ten-inch twist and the bullet's centre of mass a full half-thousandth off the bore axis. It should move the bullet's point of impact 11.3in. at 1000 yards- but in the same direction for every shot, and it is unlikely to cause as much of a wobble or corkscrew to worry most shooters. Besides, would the rifling be a half-thousandth lopsided? If there is a tapered lead in the tool, I think it would centre itself in the hole.

I once bought a geared electric motor of about 2HP on eBay for something else - without testing, cheap enough to gamble on, but I lost, for it didn't work. It had two large aluminium wire-rope drums on either side of the gearbox, which was very low-speed and high-force in itself. It occurred to me then that I could get enormous tractive force by turning one drum just a little smaller than the other. If a single wire was run through a pulley, and wound off one drum at just a slightly smaller rate per revolution than it was wound onto the other, it would pull with extraordinary force on whatever that pulley was attached to.

Another improvement on the eBay device, I believe, would be to thread your barrel before rifling, and hold it by a Mauser thread, say, rather than the collet they use.

If you want to delve into the details more thoroughly,I suggest you check out the subject on the "Practical Machinist " gunsmithing forum.......actual users of Russian ebay buttons sharing results.....And I might add ,that everything considered,cut rifling using a simple scrape type cutter is far more tolerant of poor dimensional controll......of the kind a beginner is likely to achieve.

Getting this old thread going.
The eBay thing is very strange to me. My friend Marshall was just kicked off of CB for posting a link. I think that I have probably posted 5 or 6b links and never even got an infraction. So what is up with that.
I noticed that Ballistics in Scotland no longer posts on Castboolits. What a dreadful shame. He was one very knowledgeable man. I enjoyed his every post.
Concerning the rifling buttons, I think that this guy is doing some interesting stuff with them.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I...QSkXKvXK4kBbdQ
He also mentioned that he will sell them on the unmentionable "e" sight.

I am a subscriber to the Idahoan show.. I think it’s very interesting the episode he makes a handgun barrel with a drillpress. And rifles it with one of those button’s. While not ideal, it can be made to work if you ask me... I love improvising, being an old Marine. Lots to be learned. Interesting to be able to make a serviceable weapon if and when needed.

Just my 2 cents.

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Originally Posted by Markopolo

I am a subscriber to the Idahoan show.. I think it’s very interesting the episode he makes a handgun barrel with a drillpress. And rifles it with one of those button’s. While not ideal, it can be made to work if you ask me... I love improvising, being an old Marine. Lots to be learned. Interesting to be able to make a serviceable weapon if and when needed.

Just my 2 cents.

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I don't know if you have seen his later videos on rifling. He is getting pretty good and the buttons seem to work well.

Yes, I have been watching all of his stuff. I don’t have regular tv available here, but we do Netflix’s and YouTube. So during times when we are weathered in, if not reloading or casting, we pick out some YouTube’s. There are lots of cool things to learn there, and I have been downloading YouTube’s subjects for years. I have a couple 4 terabyte hard drives hooked on to my high end router, and I just add the YouTube videos I find are educational to my ever growing library of titles on subjects that interest me. I can access these titles from my iPad from anywhere in the house, including my reloading room and workshop. I can’t tell you how many times I have used my library to get something done, step by step. Everything from refrigerator repair to my ruger 44 Carbine gas port clean out.. very handy when the satellite internet is down.

I miss the Scot as well.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

I'm glad I read this! I was cruising Ebay just a few days back looking for K31 parts and found a bolt for HIGH price, was tempted to post a link but didn't, could've been curtains!!!!!

Those rifling buttons are very interesting and while it would be very gratifying to be able to say that "I built the entire rifle/pistol right down to to making and rifling the barrel" there was another consideration that occurred to me when I considered doing that. The rifles I build are from as many parts built myself as is "practical" more-so than what might be possible, I think I could make and rifle the barrel but really when all is considered what would I have when compared to a high quality professionally made barrel blank that was manufactured on expensive made for the purpose machinery? The point is that, to me anyway, there is so much time and effort (never mind expense) that goes into building a rifle from scratch I just could not bring myself to settle for a barrel of questionable quality just for the satisfaction of being able to say I did my own rifling. Of course that's just me and it may be important to others (I admire anyone willing to do that) but building the entire rifle from scratch including the wood for the stock and building the barrel from a blank that requires doing everything but the boring/rifling is enough for me! I have been using Green Mountain and Shilen cut rifle blanks that are top quality so I am reasonably sure I have a better barrel than anything I could make myself using the rather crude and sometimes even primitive methods that would be available to me, again the point is if I'm going to the effort to make a gun the best I can I had to ask myself if trying to rifle a barrel was actually worth the (probable) trade-off? Just my opinion for my own projects and like I said I admire anyone willing to undertake doing this but if thinking of building a scratch built rifle it is something someone might want to consider.

I totally agree oldred. It’s just the prepper part of me calling out. Wondering if I could, not if I should.

For those wondering about push button rifling, Bob Hart thought it worked fine and Hart barrels have a very good reputation for accuracy.

The "Scot" was on here the 20th of January, less than a month ago.