Barrel liners

[bigted]

So been studying the seemingly semi complicated art of installing a barrel liner in my 1861 pietta colt with the short section of .357 liner I have had for several years. Bought it from TOW for this job but just getting serious about getting it done myself.

Question I have is the how of doing it with the tools I have on hand (no lathe nor mill) .

Any suggestions on how to proceed with this project?

[KCSO]

What size is the liner? Yu will need a piloted drill bit and you will drill in from both directions and meet in the middle. You may need to ream the hole to a slip fit. Fasten with black tinted acra glass. Then face off with a file and a square or use a piloted cutter from Brownell's. Then use a reamer to cut the forcing cone. Now by the time you buy the tools you need it might be cheaper to just send the barrel and liner to someone and have them do the job. Since you are supplying the liner it shouldn't be too much for labor to install.

This isn't a job you want to cut corners on as the devil is in the details and a messed up crown or forcing ccone will defeat the best lining job.

[Bent Ramrod]

Like KCSO says, the piloted drill is key. Unfortunately, the ones used for .22 rifles are the only (relatively) cheap production items. I don't know who sells anything like them in other calibers.

The other recourse is to buy a twist drill of the suitable size and have a machine shop with a lathe and a tool post grinder grind the pilot to bore size and resharpen the drill for you. Have them drill a hole in the shank and thread it so you can add an extension, if you need to.

You cannot scrimp on this. An unpiloted twist drill will drift, even if it is following a smaller hole. After all that work, and/or expense, the shooting will be so far off that you will unload the gun the first chance you get at the first price offered. Don't ask me how I know this.

You don't need a lathe to actually drill the hole. Put the barrel in a padded vise and, as advised, drill slowly with a variable speed power drill from both ends. Clean the chips frequently, and don't skimp on cutting lube. There's a "feel" you need to develop on how much pressure to put on the drill, and how fast to spin it. If you press too hard, the drill can grab and stick. Without a lathe, where you can feed in small, measurable amounts, this will give you problems, since the drill is likely to jam again in the stuck part. It takes a very delicate feel to drill out the gouge down there gradually, so you can press on. Fortunately, you have that "second chance" in the other end of the barrel.

I prefer the rough, drilled hole for a "mechanical fit" with the solder, or whatever newfangled stickum you may want to use, but reaming is OK, too.

And yes, you will be paying more for just one barrel than a gunsmith will charge, but you will have the experience, which is well worth the "lab fee."

[bigted]

the liner is from "track of the wolf" and it is 1/2 inch in diameter. maybe i should just have a smith drill/bore the barrel so it is and stays in the center. sounds like a plan but i do not see the reason for not putting it in myself. i can solder as well as the next guy and have many years experience in fab work as well as mill write work so i have faith in my ability ... except for the boring a good straight hole to begin with.

crowning is a job i have done by hand several times with great success. now the forcing cone is nother matter but im bettin i could accomplish that as well with a bit of yankee knowhow and study. i have several drill bits and think i could grind a pilot pretty close but i rather not have "pretty close" here. if i can get this one off the ground i have another lining job id like to tackle ... but thats for nother post.

then again this is a rather cheap way to "learn" sumptin new ... so dont know yet. thinkin for a month is better then jumpin in and sayin ... geez wish Ida thought this out better.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

the liner is from "track of the wolf" and it is 1/2 inch in diameter. maybe i should just have a smith drill/bore the barrel so it is and stays in the center. sounds like a plan but i do not see the reason for not putting it in myself. i can solder as well as the next guy and have many years experience in fab work as well as mill write work so i have faith in my ability ... except for the boring a good straight hole to begin with.

crowning is a job i have done by hand several times with great success. now the forcing cone is nother matter but im bettin i could accomplish that as well with a bit of yankee knowhow and study. i have several drill bits and think i could grind a pilot pretty close but i rather not have "pretty close" here. if i can get this one off the ground i have another lining job id like to tackle ... but thats for nother post.

then again this is a rather cheap way to "learn" sumptin new ... so dont know yet. thinkin for a month is better then jumpin in and sayin ... geez wish Ida thought this out better.

I think a .357 liner is a bit small for a Navy Colt unless you plan on lining the cylinders too, although then it isn't. A liner for .38-55 would probably be better - especially since they don't currently have one for .357, only 9mm., and its 10in. twist is too fast. Actually they all are, for round ball, but some are probably acceptable.

Yes, it really is important that the tool you use should be piloted. I would prefer to drill it all from one end, too. If they are meeting in the middle, it is going to be piloted on thin air for the last inch or two. Either epoxy or soft solder can make a good job on a low pressure gun which won't heat up very much, but what gunsmiths nowadays mostly use are the bearing fit (not thread-locking) grades of Loctite. You can find them described in detail, with temperature resistance and size of fillable gap, on the Loctite website.

I think, though I haven't yet done it this way, that you would get beNtter chip clearance and less chatter by pulling the tool through the bore, rather than pushing. I think that with sufficient accuracy you could line up the new bore with the existing chamber. This, though it doesn't affect the Navy, would be useful in the UK, where a very large variety of guns up to 1939 are freely ownable and importable as antiques providing that they are in the original chambering. I'd feel safest if they have the original chamber too.

I may soon find the time and moral fibre to drill my .32-40 Winchester to 9/16in. for a liner. For this I have a Rotabroach tool, which an annular drill, probably conceived to drill large holes in girders with drills which stick there by magnetism. I have slightly enlarged the hole (on a lathe, unfortunately) with a carbide drill bit, to take a 36in. length of 8mm. drill rod, which fits the bore as well as any pilot can. I have also drilled and amputated an end mill of high speed steel (or, better for this purpose) Chinese nearly-high speed) to insert a pilot.

It would be a good idea to search eBay for the following, to see what suits your needs:

counterbore
pilot drill
piloted drill
reamer

Beware of some counterbores which are described by the diameter of the screw, but they will actually counterbore the head recess. Note that if you use a reamer, a hand reamer is better, even if used in a drill. They have a long tapered lead, reducing by about 1/64in., while machine reamers have only a short chamfer.

A drill press can be very useful. Mine has a rotating table, with a spigot which fits a round hole in the... er... thing which slides up and down the column. I lathe-turned a piece of round steel rod to fit that hole, and then used the drill itself to drill it centrally and ream it with a Morse taper reamer. I can now use any Morse tooling in alignment with the drill axis, including an arbor threaded for my lathe chucks. There will be more flexure than you get with a lathe, but still nonetheless better accuracy than you could get any other way with the drill.

Here are the existing range of Track of the Wolf liners. They are made by TJ's of Alexandria KY, who also deal directly and are very helpful.

https://www.trackofthewolf.com/List/Item.aspx/637/1

[KCSO]

First off get Brownell's instructions for grinding your own piloted drill bit and if you can grind the bit you have what it takes to finish the job. The forcing cone is a tapered reamer and I prefer an 11 degree and I run it on a bore size mandrell with a pilot in front to center it. I finish the forcing cone with a polish job so it shines and this really cuts down on the leading.

[Bent Ramrod]

Bigted,

I was presuming you were going to make a .38 cartridge conversion out of your Pietta. If you are going to keep it in C&B configuration. Like BiS says, that is going to be a lot of "squish" between chamber and barrel.

If you are even a reasonably good mechanic, once you have the hole drilled accurately, the joining is pretty straightforward. I tin the outside of the liner and the bored hole in the barrel, set the liner up vertically, plug the muzzle with a piece of wood, put on a couple layers of cotton and leather gloves, and fire up the torch. Then, it's simply a matter of keeping the barrel hot and letting gravity (with an occasional assist from a gloved hand) do its work. Feed in more solder as you go, and leave 1/4" or so of liner sticking out each end. If you've already done crowning jobs, you can hacksaw off the excess liner, file down to the barrel surfaces, crown the muzzle and slightly chamfer the breech, if you are converting to cartridges. I would think if you were shooting round balls from the original chambers, you would need a much longer taper. Even then, I would expect lead shaving and poor accuracy.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

If you use some sort of tapered reamer or drill, like the hand reamer I mentioned, you can get a smooth running fit for most of the hole, tightening up just enough for it to need light driving through the muzzle. That is the best way of getting the joint to disappear. You can also fit the liner to protrude a few thousandths, crown it very slightly to stop it burring over into the bore, and peen the edges to eliminate any gap before filing it off flush.

The trouble is that a lot of things in this kind of job, like the forcing cone KCSO suggests, can be done very easily with tooling it isn't economical for the amateur to buy for a one-off or few-off job. You can make a good forcing cone with a tapered tungsten carbide burr, especially the kind with unnotched edges. I would set the barrel true vertical in a machine vice, which I would leave to find its position on the bench drill table rather than bolt it down, and I would turn the drill spindle by hand. Under power is too fast to let it find its own centre.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

If you are even a reasonably good mechanic, once you have the hole drilled accurately, the joining is pretty straightforward.

That is a bit like Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book, in which the hare receipe says "First catch your hare." But you make a good point. The hole is the only really difficult bit.

[bigted]

Guess I didn't specify the whole project ... This is for my cartridge conversion to 38 spcl. So the bore is correct indeed.

The hole boring is my main concern. I didn't know that Brownells had a tutorial on how to grind a pilot on a drill bit. Guest I need to investigate this. Thanks

[Bent Ramrod]

BiS,

Over here it was "How to Make an Elephant Ear Sandwich," and the first order of business was catching the elephant. :mrgreen:

Bigted,

Once you have the experience on one barrel, you will be able to reline every clunker you come across. The drilled holes might be different for different calibers, but the process is the same.

[bigted]

thanks BR. guess i missed something for i could not scare up the info on making my own piloted drill bit ... except to have a lathe and a grinding attachment. im bettin that i can get pretty close tho what with holding the drill motor ... or better yet ... get a harbor freight drill press and begin the grinding process on a less expensive drill bit. my current bits are rather spendy and id like to "learn" on less expensive bits from the hardware store.

i just made a wooden "Yankee hone" out of a piece of wood dowel 3/8ths inch and split it with a hacksaw and wrapped sand paper till it got to the desired size i needed for honing the top bit of a lee die so my boolits would not hang up in there every time. this works like a charm and keeps everything fairly close to centered with a bit of care.

just need the time to study i guess before making the plunge on grinding a "pilot" on the end of a drill bit ... guess first thing is to go get a couple 1/2 inch bits and have a go at it. practice makes perfect i have heard. maybe i need a 7/16ths or 15/32nd so as to be able to hone out the bore to fit the liner with no "wiggle" room.

all great suggestions and this is a great place to gain knowledge from and be able to pick brains from those willing to share it. thanks all for your time and knowledge.

[msinc]

Forget soldering it...you don't have the furnace for that and you wont get solder all the way thru it without being able to tin both pieces inside and out and then placing it back in the furnace to do the final solder. Plan on using epoxy as suggested, the relative effectiveness of either is the same IF DONE PROPERLY. I doubt you can get solder all the way thru even a pistol barrel without the proper setup unless it was less than 2-3 inches. It is very easy to do this part of the job with epoxy.
I would highly, very seriously, caution you on using that Brownell's muzzle crown tool with the hardened, heat treated, tool steel pilot that is placed in the all important muzzle right at the crown and let it spin and gunch up the rifling where it will negatively affect accuracy the most. If you are going to do this and ruin the rifling at the crown before you ever even fire the gun then you might just as well not bother with the liner and shoot the thing as is. It is a bad tool and those that use them usually continue because they do not own a borescope...if they did then they wouldn't be long putting that thing away. I'd love to meet the genius that thought spinning a hardened heat treated pilot against the lands of rifling AT THE CROWN to steady up a cutter was a good thing. I realize that a lathe and a borescope are both very expensive, but sometimes you are better off with simpler tooling than something that is going to do damage. A hand file may be tedious and slow to get the muzzle flat and square, but I guaranty you that you WILL NOT damage the rifling with it. Good luck, all the barrels I have lined shot great.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I think you could tin the inside of a drilled barrel by using acid flux and sacrificing a bronze bore brush. If your cleaning rod is plastic coated, most of them have one thread or other for which a piece of metal rod can be threaded with a die. Other than the traditional Parker-Hale thread, which comes from the end of the muzzle-loading Enfield ramrod.

I've found a mixture of zinc chloride and ammonium chloride good for soldering steel, but it can promote rust. I prefer to tin both surfaces, boil them thoroughly clean, then complete the job with rosin, which isn't as effective to use from the beginning, but fine when this is done.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I've crowned muzzles with an unpiloted carbide ball-shaped burr. They cut very fiercely, and I would neither use it under power for this job, nor even rotate it against the muzzle. I would clamp the burr in the vice, and rotate the muzzle against it.

[rbertalotto]

Check out the article on my web site about lining a barrel at home. Do a search on the site for "liner" it should pop up. Might be on second or third page.

www.rvbprecision.com

[nicholst55]

You can rent a forcing cone reamer from 4D Reamer Rentals (http://4-dproducts.com/displayitem.php?rowid=75&tname=tool) for a reasonable price. That's how I would cut the forcing cone if I didn't already own the reamer.

[John Taylor]

Even with a piloted drill, if you don't have a way to keep it lined up with the bore you will end up with an oversized hole that is out of round. Been there done that. If the pilot is not centered you will end up with an oversized hole. Been there and done that also. Now I drill one size under what I want and use a reamer for final fit. Liners can be as much as .005" under size which works well for solder of epoxy but I use loctite so I try for a very close fit. With solder the finish on the barrel may be gone, flux will take blue off.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Drill all the way through, and a hundredth of an inch or so out at the muzzle doesn't much matter on a cap and ball revolver, although with a rifle subject to heating it would. Two things are very important, though.

A hundredth of an inch kink in the hole does matter a lot. For this reason I wouldn't want to use a piloted drill from both ends, meeting in the middle. Rather than that I would use a reduced shaft drill, silver soldered into an extension. You should be able to buy ½in. stepped down to ¼in., but some HSS drills are soft enough at the rear end to turn down on a lathe with a carbide tool.

You might, for some calibres, be able to cover that fluted pilot with brass or steel tubing. HSS should stay hard with the use of the easiest melting grades of hard silver solder.

Also you must start the drilling at the forcing cone, not the muzzle. You can't afford even a fraction of that hundredth where it is in bore to cylinder alignment.

Twist drills with pilots ground in, either purchased or done by yourself, will have the pilot interrupted by deep flutes.

[John Taylor]

Pacific tool and gauge sells piloted drills with interchangeable pilots. These drills are threaded to take an extension and work very well.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Pacific tool and gauge sells piloted drills with interchangeable pilots. These drills are threaded to take an extension and work very well.

I'm sure they do, but $74.99 is a big snag for the amateur occasional user. I'm glad you mentioned them, though, as their site led to reloading die blanks, the same as RCBS use, which someone I know was asking about not long ago.

It's worth mentioning, in case the OP doesn't know, that John Taylor has a high reputation for doing this kind of work.

[bigted]

It is true that John is a master of this craft. I know as I sent my '93' Marlin 38-55 to him for a liner job and it shoots lights out ... Also there is NO line on the muzzle. Very nice job indeed.

This c&b revolver however is a personal hobby for me. Just wanting to do it the best I can possibly do. Thanks