Thanks for the photos Bill. It seems everyone in the class had a productive and enjoyable day. Students spent most of the day, preparing their barrels and final fitting them in a pre-inlet stock.
Bill has included one photo of a partially completed barrel breech profile. The final barrel shapes are being based on two original mid eighteenth century British fowling pieces. From a modern perspective these forms may seem a bit odd, but after studying them, it becomes clear that there were reasons for much of this. The exposed breech flats are roughly octagon, transitioning to full round in something around 7-8 inches. The 45 degree flats are much wider than the top or side flats. The 45 degree flats also have a slight crown or radius to them. One dominant feature is the fact that the entire bottom of the barrel is rounded out. When examining the bottom breech area, it became clear that there is significantly less material present on the bottom breech area relative to the bore than on the top surface. This provides addtitional clearance for the front lock bolt and will likely help with any possible mainspring barrel clearnace issues. There are several other interesting features about the barrel form, but are difficult to discuss without additional photos.
The point of all this rambling is this. Without original pieces to study, I believe it is near impossible to capture all the details present on pieces such as these. Many of our modern ideas and assumtions just don't apply. Along these lines, there is more of a challenge of producing barrels of this shape with modern machinery. Hand work is required to produce these irregular shapes.
As the class progresses, attempts will be made to capture the many other nuances present on the original pieces available for study. This project will likely be a challenge, but I'm guessing there will be a substantial pay off as well.
