This might seem more a topic for the "smoothbore" forum, but the question I have is intended more for builders, because of their dealings with suppliers and manufacturers, than shooters.
I understand the relatively high price of, say, a correct reproduction barrel for a specific model brown bess, U.S. military musket, etc. The demand for this, that, or the other precise model might be somewhat low, so, while enough people want that particular barrel to make it worthwhile to market it, it's going to be priced in keeping with other items that are aimed at a specialty market. Am I basically on track, so far?
What puzzles me is the absence of any sort of "generic" round smoothbore barrel. I see octagon-to-round tubes sold at prices that a ten-dollar-an-hour grasscutter and snowpusher like myself can afford; why not a plain round fowler/musket barrel that's kept as simple as possible and would be correct on a gun representing what your "average" smith would have crafted for a customer of limited means and a need for a gun to satisfy his militia or personal requirements? Is there something to the making of tapered round, non-rifled barrels that's more complicated than I realize, or has market research established that smoothbore shooters aren't interested in the "non-pattern" arms of our early history?
I'd like to build a plain musket that, like many of the originals, combined features from guns of English, French, German, or other origin, but were in no way even close copies of any specific make or model, and I can't see my way clear to pay a couple of hundred dollars or more for a bess or Charleville barrel. It's not a matter of being cheap, it's a matter of just not having that kind of money to spend on a single project.
I understand the relatively high price of, say, a correct reproduction barrel for a specific model brown bess, U.S. military musket, etc. The demand for this, that, or the other precise model might be somewhat low, so, while enough people want that particular barrel to make it worthwhile to market it, it's going to be priced in keeping with other items that are aimed at a specialty market. Am I basically on track, so far?
What puzzles me is the absence of any sort of "generic" round smoothbore barrel. I see octagon-to-round tubes sold at prices that a ten-dollar-an-hour grasscutter and snowpusher like myself can afford; why not a plain round fowler/musket barrel that's kept as simple as possible and would be correct on a gun representing what your "average" smith would have crafted for a customer of limited means and a need for a gun to satisfy his militia or personal requirements? Is there something to the making of tapered round, non-rifled barrels that's more complicated than I realize, or has market research established that smoothbore shooters aren't interested in the "non-pattern" arms of our early history?
I'd like to build a plain musket that, like many of the originals, combined features from guns of English, French, German, or other origin, but were in no way even close copies of any specific make or model, and I can't see my way clear to pay a couple of hundred dollars or more for a bess or Charleville barrel. It's not a matter of being cheap, it's a matter of just not having that kind of money to spend on a single project.
