Twice, Regulating, groan! I was trying to sort this all out, on my own, so my methodology may be flawed. My barrels are straight tapered, so at some point down range the balls would cross, and I wanted to use one set of sights for aiming both barrels, even though a lot of the SXS's of the flint era had a sight for each barrel. I took the two mating sides of each barrel and filed out enough material so that if joined at the breech and muzzle, they could be squeezed together and have a common impact point at one hundred yards. I don't remember, off the top of my head, all the math I used, but when filed and laid together they touched at the muzzle and breech, sort of like a bowlegged man, heels together, merging at the crotch. I made bore plugs and inserted them at the muzzles and the breech, suspended the barrels by the plugs on a flat surface, insuring, for elevation, the bores would be running together. Lightly clamped then at the muzzle and breech and silver soldered them. Inserted the B/P's and drilled the touch holes, made a try stock out of two by fours, made a thing, sort of like a weaver mount and soft soldered it to one of the barrels, and mounted a scope on it. Scope alignment didn't have to be perfect, as long as I put the cross hairs on the same spot down range, and my impacts were on the paper, I was shooting for left and right barrel groups. At fifty yards, as assembled, I had one group about two and a half inches above and two inches to the left of the other. According to my math, windage wise I was where I wanted to be, as they would merge at one hundred yards, but elevation wise, I was off. I had made provision for windage adjustments, bringing shims and clamps with me to wedge apart or squeeze the barrels for that purpose, but for elevation, I was out of luck. I should have left them alone and considered one dead on at fifty and the other dead on at one hundred. But in the arrogance of ignorance, I thought I could do better. I un-soldered the muzzles, realigned for elevation an tried again. No dice, it got worse. After a few more try's I figured with the high heat of repeated silver soldering I may have damaged the muzzle's, so I cut about one and a half inches off. This fixed and tightened back up, the grouping of the barrels individually, but not together as a common impact point. I finally gave in, and gave each barrel its own set of sights, and finished the gun. Unhappy with my with the sights, I finally made one front sight, and one rear sight that has one blade/notch for one barrel, rotates, or flips ninety degrees, and has another blade/notch for the other barrel. Well there it is, warts and all, but I learned a lot, and if motivated, I am confident I could use those lessons to accomplish what I had started out to do originally, one set of sights for both barrels. I am at peace with my compromise, and do enjoy shooting the gun now. I don't really consider the project a failure, a failure would have been not daring myself to try this in the first place.
It weighs in at just under ten pounds. I hope I have made this understandable. If not, feel free to ask.
Robby
