Freshing out rifling

[Dave B]

I am curious how many of you guys have ever tried to freshen out a barrel?

[Acer Saccharum]

Dave, you won't beat me with posting like this. See, you are asking a question, which causes me to answer. Then the score stays the same.

You must make posts, and a lot of them, that don't require a response, especially from me.

No Charge.

T

[Dave B]

LOL,
I will never catch you if you keep up the posting rate from the .com site.
I am glad that I have a place where I know there are others that share in my disorder and are willing to discuss all relevant topics.

[rich pierce]

I've lapped but not freshed barrels.  Want to give it a try; just don't have a barrel that needs it.

[bob in the woods]

I have just finished one. I used a hickory rod with a lengthwise notch for a piece of chain saw file[ acting as the cutter] I cut out a section of the rod on the opposite side so that I could add layers of cig. paper
in order to increase the depth of cut. This set up guides itself. I changed shallow flat bottom rifling grooves to deeper round bottom grooves. The edge of the file piece is the real worker, scraping more that filing. It took a long time. A very long time.

[chris laubach]

been there, done that. More than once

[Roy S.]

a few times

[Robby]

Just once, using a method previously discussed. A lot of work, but worth it.

[flintriflesmith]

Back in the old days there were very few new barrels (none we could afford) and lots of old rusty ones so we freshed a lot of barrels. These barrels were often pitted and we moved three to five calibers of iron.

In the 18-19th century freshening was very different! A wrought iron barrel would wear to the point where the corners would no longer hold a patch and the barrel would suddenly start shooting flyers. Freshening to cure this condition removes less than .005 (1/2 caliber) and could be done several times without materially changing the caliber.

I put pictures of the freshing slug and cutters on my web site along with a short article on how to do it. Drill down through tools and techniques.

Gary

[newtire]

Did this on my Grandpa's old scheuzten rifle.  Made a cutter out of a file and made it real close to the width of the grooves.  I embedded this cutter into a 3/8" dowel rod and used the cigarette paper method to shim the cutter.  Worked out great as the rifle is a .40 caliber.  I would work on it a little at a time until clean steel started coming out.  I was surprised at how easy it went.  It just took a long time.  I lost the cutter and the dowel.

[Daryl]

I tried one years ago as a test, but mistakenly tried a previously buttoned barrel. I got bored with lack of apparent progress (poor patience) due somewhat to the work-hardened non-stress-relieved barrel and scrapped the idea and bought a new barrel instead.

[jerrywh]

 Never did. I have rifled by hand once. My time is more valuable than that.  If you can make a living refreshing barrels you are world record speed. But let me warn you. Your body will not hold up to it for long. So-- you better charge a lot. PS-- save the money. You will need it later.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

I just posted photos of my freshing bench, let me know if you want more details of how did they do that (HDTDT).

http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=49600.msg491550#msg491550

Jim

[Chowmi]

Jim,
I have a question:

On your rig, do you twist the mandrel to follow the rifling, or does the rod turn in the handle as dictated by the twist of the barrel?  Or is it something completely different that I missed?

Norm

[smokinbuck]

Never have done it but have an "old" rifling machine and over 100 freshing heads from the shop of George Brammer.
Mark

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

With my freshing bench the lead part of the rod is cast in the barrel bore, so it has the lands/grooves matching the particular barrel.  As I push the rod in/out of the barrel, the rod naturally twists in the rifle grooves.  The wooden handle mount is a bearing that allows the rod to freely rotate.  So the action is just a push/pull stroke with the tool allowing for rotation.  Here is a close up of the handle the iron rod is just 5/16 round, threaded on both ends to attach to the freshing rod on one end and the wooden handle bearing on the other end.  I have included a stop collar to limit the motion on the push so the lead part of the rod does not come all the way out.  I hope that this makes sense.

Jim

[Elnathan]

Jim,

Do you have any difficulty getting the cutter to start cutting instead of hanging up on the shoulder of the breech? How do you protect the breech threads?

I've been wondering about that.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

Elnathan has asked great questions!  When freshing a barrel the cutter enters the barrel from the muzzle end, it is easy to align the cutter when you can actually see the rifle grooves.  The photo is of the cutter just entering the muzzle end of a barrel, trust me, the muzzle is there somewhere.  This may be interesting, when freshing an original barrel I find that the muzzle end is very slightly larger in bore diameter than a few inches more towards the breech.  This could be due to ramrod wear or due to preferential corrosion near the muzzle.  Either way the cutter is very easy to start if the freshing rod enters the barrel from the muzzle end.  However, it is very typical for original rifled barrels to be made with a very slight taper to the bore, the muzzle is often a few thousandths of an inch smaller than the breech end.  This is due to use of an armory reamer where the wood backing strip wears as the reamer passes from the breech end to the muzzle end.  I believe that the ramrod wear / preferential corrosion results in old used original barrels having the opposite configuration.  I hope that this makes sense.


As far as the breech threads, I normally cut off the entire old threads and the threaded hole for a percussion drum.  This does shorten the barrel by an inch, but there are no breech threads to consider.  When I fresh a barrel where I plan to leave the breech threads as original (unusual for me), this is where the stop collar really helps.  As I finish the cutting stroke the rod is at the far end of the barrel where I really cannot see the cutter, so the stop collar allows me to stop the stroke at the proper place without over extending the cutter.   Also, I made the stop collar from a piece of an old .22 barrel, but don't tell anyone.

Jim

[David R. Pennington]

Thanks again Jim

[Dave B]

Jim, Thanks for the photos. Do you use a Saw type tooth to your cutter or pyrmid type teeth? not sure what else to call that type of cutter.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

The cutters are copied / adapted from some original cutters in the Fry brothers tool collection.  The teeth are made to be at about 45 degrees to the bore centerline and are triangular in profile with rounded valleys and sharp peaks.  I assume that the Frys used round needle files to cut the teeth.  These cutters actually scraped the bore surface equally on both the push and pull strokes.  One end of the cutter included a small notch to allow the tip of a small tool to pry the cutter out of the slot in the lead in order to add paper shims underneath.  Here are some photos of the original cutters, you can still see the 150 year old cutting chips!.

Jim

[DICKH]

      I did one barrel after doing one barrel made me wonder how did Bill Large freshen a gain
twist barrel.

Richard Henderson

[rich pierce]

Looks like the Fry brothers used round bottomed furrows.

[G_T]

Hot freshened, exactly, but I did have to do a fair bit of work on a barrel this winter. When I had test shot it years ago it would just shread patches with burn marks etc. Not good. So I put the rifle aside.

I pulled it out and decided to lap the barrel. When I pulled the breach it looked pretty decent at that end. But the muzzle end showed lots of tooling marks on the lands. So I decided to lap just the bore before lapping the rifling.

I machined my first lap from brass to 0.0005 under bore size, or so I thought. With some abrasive, it would move down the bore but not particularly easily. When it  got about 10" from the muzzle it sort of went thunk and stopped solid. It almost seems like when the barrel was made, the bore wasn't reamed all the way to the muzzle before rifling. Ugh.

I spent a couple weeks a bit at a time lapping the lands out through a series of machined plugs, both brass and unhardened steel. When it looked smooth end-to-end with no evidence of constriction anywhere and no remaining tooling marks, I went ahead and coned it enough that one could start a ball by thumb, though not easily. A patched ball will run through the barrel smoothly now.

I've been waiting for a good day to take it out to check the results. Who knows, I might have to work on the rifling as well. The wood is part way through carving and any day I've had has been raining.

Gerald

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

In response to Rich Pierce's observation:  The cutter shown in the photos is for the lands and is made with an arc than roughly matches the rifle barrel bore arc.  The groove cutter is shown in the photo below and would cut a rather square groove but with slightly rounded corners (lets call this a round square groove ?)



I believe that the shape of the rifle grooves found in original rifles is only very rarely the result of the original gunsmith's work, but is the final result of the last freshing job.  A rifle barrel that was rifled with round bottom grooves by Jacob Dickert may now have square grooves!

Also, freshing was certainly not limited to rifles, smoothbores were also freshed as they were just as subject to corrosion.  Here is a photo of one of the many smooth bore freshing rods used by the Fry brothers.  Just a thought on HDTDT.  How in the world did the Fry brothers pour the molten lead into the space shown on the freshing rod - with a bore filling wood section at either end?   I have no idea!  Any thoughts?

Jim

[