Building a musket from scratch?

[Redleg130th]

I have searched google with different combinations of terms but have unable to find any decription of how to make muskets. I assume the barrel is cast, then bored, heat treated somehow, and polished. The other parts I assume are cast. For the stock I have found books that decribe the process.

I also assume the process is costly and laborous . Does anyone know of books on this subject, decribing the tools required and building process?

Has anyone here made a musket from scratch?

 

[Stumpkiller]

John Donelson will make a rifle from scratch for you. For a price.

He forges a "skelp" (I believe it is called) - a flat piece of iron tapered as required - and forges this around a mandrel into a tube. This is repeatedly heated and shaped until the bottom seam is thoroughly welded where it closes along the mandrel. I assume musket barrels were formed the same way before the modern extrusion castings for steel rods.

Foxfire 5, as I remember, has a write up on a smith forging a barrel.

 

Hershel house will do the same for a price. In fact falsears has told me that there is a foxfire book where they interview Hershel and he goes over the complete building of a long rifle from scratch.

 

[Liver eatin’ Johnson]

Redleg,

If you can beg, borrow, or rent a copy of Gunsmith of Williamsburg you will see the whole process pretty much. I saw it years ago and was very impressed - it is still a video everyone talks about.

Gunsmith of Williamsburg video

 

[Zonie]

The barrels for modern guns are not cast.
Castings have large grains and are not very strong compared with wrought materials.

The nearest thing to a casting is the furnace "melt" which is cast into ingots which are huge (weighing tons).
When cool, (or not so cool) the ingot is cut into smaller pieces which are then heated bright red hot and run thru a series of rollers which start out large and get progressively smaller. This rolls the material into smaller and smaller rods (or thinner and thinner plates or other forms).

The material is reheated in the process when it gets to cool for this rolling process to work effectivly.
Most people refer to this type of stock as Hot Rolled.

For more precision material, the hot rolled material is descaled and then left at a cool temperature. These are then run thru even smaller rollers which compresses it just from brute force. This is the typical Cold Rolled stock people often work with.

The benefit of rolling the material is it not only makes the material smaller, it compresses and works the cast grains into a more homogeneous much finer (and stronger) grained piece of material.

The final products strength depends on the types of materials that went into the melt.

I know. :: Too much science and not enough guns.

 

[Redleg130th]

That video looks very interesting, I will see if I cant get a copy.

Zonie, yes thats what I was looking for. Is this rod of steel then bored with some kind of a drill to make the bore itself? I would think this boring machine would be large and rare though. Also, how is the final bore dimensions verified? I would think it would be tricky to keep the bore drill straight at musket lengths and and deviation from center would produce a thin barrel wall on one side.

 

[Liver eatin’ Johnson]

Actually, the mandrel ( steel rod ) is the "hole" around which a piece of flat steel is wrapped with the seam welded together in a forge to make it into a tube after the mandrel is removed. The newly formed tube is then rifled ( if that is what is being made ) with a twist inside being determined by the gunmaker.

 

[bdarin]

Try www.Lautard.com. It's a metalworking site and he sells a video on how to make a gun barrel...deep hole drilling, reaming, rifling, etc. I've not seen it but others highly acclaim it. The drilling process itself will probably do you in, getting a drill to go straight down a 30" length of steel is a process in itself. Good luck. :thumbsup:

 

[Zonie]

If you are going to try to make the barrel, you have your work cut out.
As the others posted, the original guns barrels were made by forge welding a strip of iron around a mandral making a hollow tube.
This tube was then finish bored or reamed (by hand) on a long benchlike gun drilling machine to establish the finished size.
If the bore was bent, the barrel was physically straightened by bending it in the opposite direction.
In the old days, this was all done by eye.

If it was to be rifled, it was then put on the rifling machine which cut one farrel (groove) at a time, taking a little material with each stroke.
There are many books and vidios which describe this process.

Modern factorys use a "gun drill" which is a horizontal machine with a very special drill bit. The bit does not rotate, the barrel does as it is slowly fed into the drill.
This process by the way will drill a very straight hole if the drill is properly sharpened.

The precision of holes drilled by these drills is around +/-.001 on the diameter.
For inexpensive barrels, this is sometimes considered to be good enough. For premium barrels, the bore is usually reamed (on the same or similar machines) by a multi-fluted tungsten carbide reamer. The size tolerance on a reamed hole is usually about +/-.00025 measured on the diameter.
Really good barrels bores are then lapped and polished to a mirror like finish.

The best barrels bores are measured with a "air gage" which is inserted thru the bore and uses leaking air to determine the size variation from a Master Gage.
Air gages are incredibly accurate, some being able to measure as little as 10 millionths of an inch.


If the barrel is to be rifled, it is placed on a rifleing machine which may use several different methods of producing the finished rifleing.

The fine points of making a barrel are too numberous to get into here, but if your really interested in the subject, there are many good books available.

 

[Redleg130th]

Thank you for the replies, I am gonna have my wife order that video and the metalworking site is chock full of great info.

Well after some research, the process of making barrels is expensive. However, the other parts are within reach, the tools to make stocks and other metal pieces are less complicated and I think I can learn them with practice. Perhaps later, if I can learn the other skills well enough I will look into barrel making. Is there a vendor of musket barrels that deals with the 1700-1800 era smoothbores? Brown Bess, Charleville, Springfield 1795, etc. Google is not giving me much, those that I do find have the Civil War era barrels, but not earlier. Is there a US maker of smoothbore military musket barrels?

Edit - For context for my question, on my return from my Deployment from Iraq I plan on taking an SBA loan and opening a musketmaking shop focusing on those models. I don't expect to live off it for awile, my full time job will provide that. I do expect to have much to learn about this trade.

 

[LSU TIGER]

Colerain makes a pretty wide assortment of musket barrels.

 

[madstone]

The "foxfire" book also included, I believe, a note that NO ONE really is sure exactly how they forged a bbl from the skelp. T Hacker Martin was allegedly the last man left who knew, for sure, and had done it like old Bean, etc. Someone asked him if the modern re-enactors, like Herschel, "had it right". He supposedly said they were close enough? Sadly we pilgrims were under his feet so much he became crusty and allowed another piece of lore to die along with him?
I'm sure some of you know far more about this than I. I've watched lots of smithin', done a little. Seen barrels made, too. Not enough to weld a bbl w/o many trials and errors. About a barrel of flux and 3- 50 blank skelps would get me started!
I sometimes think the spiral welding was not entirely drilled and reamed out and the result was the first rifle!
"Dang, Pa, look what happened when that lazy boy forgot to finish reaming that barrel!" Silly, huh? Or the final reamer developed a pair of "snags" that led to a spiral left in the inside? Bet rifling was a carefully guarded secret but...
Personally, I'd have cheated and forged one long seam on the bottom and hid it with wood and rust browning. About 3-4 young, but inexperienced, female blacksmiths hammering and me just being me, and supervising. Nod wisely and grimace occasionally? Experienced b-smiths would have bulging biceps and instill more fear than admiration?
Sorry for the transgression/digression.
:yakyak:

 

[Redleg130th]

Found a supplier at http://www.vernoncdavisandco.net/proindex.htm. Anyone do bussiness with these folks?

 

[LSU TIGER]

The prices listed seem a bit out dated. Those Chamber's locks are going for over a "C" note today. It would be worth a call, though.