Questions of an interesting design.

[mckutzy]

i came across this pistol many years ago and once again have thought about its construction.
http://www.flintlockcollection.net/img_gallery.php?ID=252&page=2


i thought, how would it be possible to make this very similar arm. now if a block was drilled to accept a barrel(s) that was turned down, what would be the best way to secure the barrels, by threading the barrels and block, or shrink fit?
both of wich i think can do, but interested in others opinions.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Threading the barrel to the block is traditional. Machine tolerances were not capable of doing a swaged fit in those days.

 

[mckutzy]

sorry i meant to say, to reproduce one in todays machine age.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Swaging barrels to a breechblock requires the two parts be made of similar steel- so they will heat and cool together. That is not particularly difficult to do. However, choosing to swage, or to thread is going to depend on your available equipment, and skills. Drilling the breechblock will generally not be enough. You will need a reamer of an appropriate size to get the hole smooth enough, and sized just right for swaging. And, for cutting the barrel stock to correct dimension for the swaging, you will need to either have a lathe with a coolant feed, or take your time so that the final cuts do not heat the stock up too much, throwing off the dimension when the piece cools.

All that is a lot more work than just threading the two parts and screwing them together, to me. But, that is just my opinion.

There are so many other little frustrating details that take much more time to do when working on these projects that I tend to want to do the work that is easily done( with the right equipment on hand) quickly, and get on to those harder jobs, that often can't be done any other way than with hand tools. Just designing and then setting those two flintlocks in place, behind the O/U barrels, so that you get correct, and fast ignition is going to be the big headache. Doing this on a large bore shotgun is one thing: doing it on a smaller pistol is quite a bit more of a challenge.

Please keep us appraised of your progress. :thumbsup:

 

[mckutzy]

i have access to lathes at my last job, and yes this is going to be quite the feat to achieve.
i have been researching this in my spare time for the last several years,


oh ya drilling was just a shortform, i was thinking ether use a drill or boreing bar, then probable a boring bar to square the bottom of the hole, then ream. as for the barrel turn down to a rough size, within about .010 maby, then grind to a final size based on what the reamer mic's out to be. they have a grinding lathe.

now i know that this would be a nice way to go, but my reasoning behind this way is that if i were to screw the barrels (for the record i was thinking a round,.50cal) into the breach, how am i going to gip them when it is time to cinch them tight.
As i see it, i do want these to be permanent, it looks like i could just go ahead an thread them in and have a sacrificial portion to cut off, like if i milled a flat or just used a big pipe wrench on each barrel, but then it is crowning issues.
I would like to have them have a flat true muzzle and a crown to support that, but if this were the way i would have to put center marks on the back of the breach on center to the bores of the barrels and use a mandrel for the muzzle to turn it flat, then a coning tool.

i dont have access to Oct. barrels or that wouldnt be a problem except for timing.. to have both barrels be square to each other.

so problems are defiantly there. and it continues..

As for the lock..... well i have chosen to a single lock, R/h ignition with a tap action pan for 2 barrels. my initial thoughts were to that of using an external mainspring and a frizzen spring similar to that of a tap action pistol in flint. http://www.cwslagleantiques.com/view_detail.cfm?catid=66&id=3384
but there is enough room to have regular mainspring, and that wouldnt interfere with the selector pan i have to make. also this would be a carbine smoothbore.

as far as as i can tell it would be the first arm of this type of action.

Oh yes i have taken on quite the project for myself. as it stands i have sorta figured out the lock. its going to be difficult to say the least. :cursing: :cursing:

 

[paulvallandigham]

The pan on the left side the pictured gun has a hole in the bottom, much like the touchhole in a cannon. That means that firing that barrel( bottom ) will involve a definite, meaureable hang-fire.

FitttttttBANG.

I think, frankly, there are better action designs to use to improve ignition, whether your gun be a rifle, or pistol, like this one is.

I am not sure I understand what your concern is. If the bore of the two barrels are straight, and the current outside dimension of both barrels are squared to each bore, than when you cut the breech down to the diameter needed to swage into the breechblock, and bore those holes in the breechblock square, both of the barrels will be square,and the two bores will be square to each other, also. That doesn't guarantee they will both shoot to the same point of aim, or POI. But they should be close. It is going to depend on how tight you hold your tolerances for those metal parts. NO?

 

[BadHorse]

what a bitchen gun! i want one!

 

Look at photo number 5. You can see the joint on the off side.
http://www.flintlockcollection.net/img_gallery.php?ID=252&page=5

The barrels aren't threaded into a block. They were left square at the breech, then soldered together, and then filed round on the top and bottom.

Sean

 

[mckutzy]

oh yes the hang fire, as to the other designs out there with o/u 2 locks in flint, the lower left hand lock has usealy a tunnle to the touchhole, so yes hang time is present. im excepting of this as par for the course. when i prime i will have to lighten up on the lower prime and not fill the box , kinda like not over filling a regular pan.

as for the barrles- screw in round ones, there will be nothing to hold onto for the tighting into the breach.
-octagonal will have flats to mate with the wrench. but the timing of the thread to have the flats match.

Press fit shrunk on barrels- round need no jig for holding.

-octagonal needs a jig for flats to match.

now this is no means to improve the action but as another example of the technology.

 

[Tinker2]

I hope that this would help with your question on installing screw in barrels. This gun is O/U with round barrels, not flint but the barrels could still be installed this way.

The four notches in the barrels fit a square tapered tool that fits inside the barrels to unscrew them

Tinker2

 

[mckutzy]

that was a thought as well, but as these barrels are going to be permanent, im wondering if the torque would mar the muzzle during instalation but also as to having the position of the spanner marks lining up or i guess i could add some filework to disguise the marks but i would like it to be even on both.

wow thats quite the piece, a nice oldie, i haven't seen really that many of the cap variants before. I defiantly like these types of arms, their concept and construction is very interesting.

The main part of the reason i have chosen flint over cap for ignition, in Canada a caplock anything, i would have to have a firearm license and register it with the govenment to own it. so sadly a caplock with a cool selector for barrel switching..... would be out for me :cursing: :cursing:

 

[mckutzy]

yes that it would be, once i getter done, but as the few design details show it hasent been easy on the implementation of it.

 

[paulvallandigham]

I have a CVA " Duckfoot " pistol I put together. It has three barrels, that screw into a common breechblock, and all three barrels are fired with the same percussion cap. I have shot the gun. I have also removed the barrels for cleaning, and screwed them back into the block when I was done.

I don't think there is any good reason to think a threaded barrel can't be " permanent", and still be removeable. If the barrels cannot be removed from the breech, how do you deal with balls that are stuck? With a jag that has pulled off the end of a ramrod?

Build a new gun?

I don't think you have to worry about Torque hurting any barrel, because there is NO NEED to put that much torque when screwing in the barrels. This is not a gun that is going to be creating 60,000 ft lbs. of pressure of the chamber, as some modern high performance rifles cartridges do! Even my .31 caliber pistol has a hard time generating much pressure, using FFFg powder behind 3 RBs which all fire at once.

( NOTE: These Duckbill guns are more a novelty than a gun you might expect to hit with. I stood at about 15 feet from three targets and could barely keep the 3 balls on each of the three targets, even at that close range. The gun originally was designed to protect the Ship's captain from mutineers, and pirates, who might have to come through the very narrow halls and doorways to get to him. At close social distances, he could be sure of wounding at least 3 of them, altho the small caliber would require a lucky shot to kill anyone outright. Because they didn't have anti-biotics, any wound was likely to prove fatal, after weeks of painful dying from bacterial infections. For that reason, facing, much less charging a man armed with one of these guns was not something most sane people would do willingly. The fan-shaped pattern of the three barrels was intended to intimidate the enemy, by convincing them that more than one person would be hit when the gun was fired. )

 

[mckutzy]

ahh yes what a pirate gun that is.... :grin: :grin:

that is a very good point, i could initialy tighten the barrels with a padded jawed wrench, then make my spanner marks and tool to match with lined up marks on the barrels. having a touchhole liners could lock it all in....mmmmmm interesting.....


ahh yes black powder arms in any time would be very bad if one was shot from one. we hunt from ur average musket and take game effectively, so a person would probably have slim pickings to begin with. altho i laughed hysterically when on the movie Master and Commander when the doc gets gutshot at close range with an india pattern by one of the crew aiming at a bird, and he lives by telling one other guy on how to remove it... ya right... .75 cal is going to ruin any ones day, any time... i have one, so im a believer and my friends too. I feel sorry for a man who is been operated on by a doctor who finds out a black powder arm was used in the shooting. all the time trying to find it and the cleaning, wich is never good enough, sad realy. but any ways...

 

[Tinker2]

i came across this pistol many years ago and once again have thought about its construction.
http://www.flintlockcollection.net/img_gallery.php?ID=252&page=2


i thought, how would it be possible to make this very similar arm. now if a block was drilled to accept a barrel(s) that was turned down, what would be the best way to secure the barrels, by threading the barrels and block, or shrink fit?
both of wich i think can do, but interested in others opinions.

Just the thinking part, right?

"but interested in others opinions.”

OK, I am not sure I wanted to say this on the forum, how about a shoulder on the back of each barrel, pulled into the block by a socket headed, shouldered breach plug.
A cross pin on each and it wont come lose till you want.



It would not make any difference if the barrels were round or octagon and there would not be any marks on the outside of the barrels.

I’m not sure I said that so it made any sense. Just the thinking part.

Sounds like a fun build, keep us posted. Hope that helped.

Have you looked at this as a platform to use or parts? http://www.dixiegunworks.com/produ...=1220&osCsid=175c709d2a3b3771cea8cf3d6daa81ab






Tinker2

 

[mckutzy]

the tinder lighter kit would be usefull for parts, but im thinking that im going to use my small RH Siler from dixie. all i would need a is a replacement frizzen and spring, if my conversion goes wrong that is all i will have to sacrifice. i will have to build up(with a bead of weld) the area of the lockplate where the frizzen pivots on, opposite of the bridle of the frizzen for the frizzen spring to work.

 

[mckutzy]

this is sorta what im getting at, altho it is a pistol, this is roughly what im talking about. the black dots are where the touchholes are, (lower one would be covered by the selector box) and the mainspring will fit by some slight grinding on the breach block and to the spring itself. i forgot to add the frizzen spring when i used the paint program on the orig pic.

 

[flintriflesmith]

Look at photo number 5. You can see the joint on the off side.
http://www.flintlockcollection.net/img_gallery.php?ID=252&page=5

The barrels aren't threaded into a block. They were left square at the breech, then soldered together, and then filed round on the top and bottom. Sean

Sean,
I have no idea why everyone seems to be ignoring your observation on how the original was make. The silver solder joint (educated guess) is obvious and doing it that way allows it to be done with a very minimal tool kit.
I think you have it exactly right and the top barrel seems to have a conventional breech plug and tang. The bottom barrel only needs a lug.
Gary

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

Ditto. It makes construction so much simpler. No machine shop necessary.

 

[fitter]

Was wondering when somebody was going to say something. Nobody even gave Shawn's post a second thought and he has it right.