Here is a pretty good thread on practical machinist about barrel making.
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...-lathe-291506/
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Here is a pretty good thread on practical machinist about barrel making.
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...-lathe-291506/
Grizzly tools has a couple of gunsmithing and barrel making books on their website. Frank
There is at least one guy on YouTube that makes buttons to rifle his barrels using a hydraulic ram to force them through.
I had the same yen about 20 years ago. Did a lot of reading, learned how it was/is done, realized that it would use up far too much of my time and resources to justify actually doing it. Unless you're as obsessive as Harry Pope, who did almost nothing else, you won't begin to match what you can buy.
BTW the book The Story of Pope's Barrels makes good reading.
Just finished reading it. Good book but the hero worship was a bit over the top.
And I agree, it would be easy to dedicate your life to doing barrels for almost no pay when you could be doing something else that is much more lucrative. I think it's going to depend on how much actual work I can generate once the shop is up and running hopefully I'll be busy enough to not have time to think about making barrels.
Pope certainly was lionized, but like some others in the gun world he was also a relentless self-promoter, which accounts for some of it.
I've come to the conclusion that he was chronically depressed. Something that has almost never been talked about is that for some time before it was made illegal he had a cocaine habit. Self-medicating? Have known the type, all too well.
Given the cost of tooling up, you either have to make commercial quantities of barrels, or you have to charge an arm and a leg for each one, or you live like Harry. Does the book admit that the whole time he was in New Jersey he never paid rent? The guy who owned the building made him a charity case.