Several years ago I read an article by Peter Alexander in one of the muzzleloading magazines. It it, he described a vey simple coning reamer with a single cutting lip. I had one made with a 1/4 pilot on the tip so that I could use brass bushings to keep the tool centered with any bore diameter. I also had made a more modern, spiral flute reamer with the same pilot / bushing arrangement on the tip. As one might expect, the spiral reamer worked much better than the older single lip design, but both worked well. The spiral reamer will cone a barrel with less than 3 minutes work and leaves a perfectly centered, excellent surface finish.
Of course, not long after I went to the trouble of getting this all done, I came across Daryl and Taylor's posts about putting just a slight radius on the muzzle edge with a thumb and abrasive paper. Never one to shy away from over complicating a simple problem, I made a set of these tools to cut just a nice, perfectly centered, radius on the muzzle edge.
This is how a barrel came from the manufacturer......
The tool in use (takes about two or three turns and a minutes worth of time).....
Here is what the cutter looks like in profile.......
The finished radius. Actually, this photo does not convey that the radius smoothly blends into the bore diameter. Also, after I posted this a few years ago, some of the responses were that the radius looks fairly excessive. I agreed, so I have re-made the cutters with a much smaller radius. I don't have a picture handy, but the radius now looks like the ones Daryl and Taylor do so precisely and successfully with their thumb....
As I mentioned...there is no sense doing something the simple way when you can complicate the heck out of it !!
