Traditional muzzle crowns...

[Gaeckle]

Not to be too crude about it but why not use a simple countersink?  It looks to me like the factory crowns on my Colerain and Green Mt. barrels were made that way.

You may use a countersink and they do have a tendancy to chatter....I solve this by wrapping  120-150 grit sandpaper on the countersink and using a reversable hand drill slowly proceed, but in reverse.....seems to polish out and smooth out the chatter marks.

I haven't any lathes or other fine fancy tools at my disposal, so I have to be creative and inventive and use hand tools.

[BrentD]

Many great replies and ideas here. I really appreciate it.  I have a barrel that will need to be cut and crowned soon.  It is a C weight Green Mt, .54 barrel.  I will cut it at the waist (about 36"). 

So, if crowning is not out of the realm of possibility with hand tools, what about cutting and squaring the muzzle before it is crowned?  On a straight octagon or round barrel I can see how this might be done and the waist of my barrel may have a long enough straight section to allow me to use a square and file to get it plumb, but where barrels are tapered, what is the solution for those w/o a lathe?

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

The best that I can do with a tapered barrel, and no lathe, is to use a small machinist's square, and make the open space in the corner of the square the same all the way around.  Lay the square against the side of the barrel, and check the gap in the 90 deg. corner.  Move it to the flat opposite, and file to make the two gaps even, then repeat for each of the remaining flats.

[okieboy]

 Well Taylor, I hadn't really planned on showing this little trick, but you just got it out of me.
 This tool is called the "Piloted Abrasive Face Mill". We drill through a piece of flat wood with our well squared drill press, glue in a dowel of suitable size, adjust the pilot diameter if we have to, punch or cut a hole in a piece of adhesive backed sand paper, stick the paper on, and there you go!
 I buy adhesive backed sanding discs to cut up and stick to this and Popsicle sticks and dowel rods. You could just use glue and regular sand paper, but this can be peeled off and replaced.
 This one was used while fitting a breech plug, for crown work I would make the pilot longer.
 In use, the mill does not do most of the metal removal, in stead it generates a shiney high spot which gets filed down a little, just like stain transfer work. When it gives an even shine all the way around, the end is square.
 

[Ben I. Voss]

SquirrelHeart, are the lands in that barrel filed down to make the grooves at the muzzle like Taylor suggests? Can you let us know? Thanks!

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

You are one of the cleverest builders I know!  Great idea.

[Roger B]

Interesting.  The Hawkens that I looked closely at Jim Gordon's Museum didn't appear to have any crown.  Whats even more interesting that you don't find references to short starters in the literature of the period or shooting accessories that survived to present.  I don't think that they used the patch & ball combinations that we use today. 
Roger B.

[Blacksmoke]

Roger:  I agree with you - I think we tend to apply modern techniques to our re- creation a little  too much.   In another thread I suggested the use of "leather" for patching.   Soft braintan deerskin is very compressable and would accommodate "being squeezed" into a muzzle quite easily that did not have modern crown fashioned in to it.   Yes I have tried it!  I fired an original longrifle using leather for a patch - it works excellent.   Also you can re-use the patch over again and again.      Hugh Toenjes

[38_Cal]

My step-dad, born in 1910, shot muzzleloaders in the '20's and '30's, and never used a short starter.  Pre-cut patches, cut into an octagon shape, lubed with tallow, and started with the ramrod.  Balls cast in the old type moulds.  I have a rifle he built as a teenager with the help of his uncle, who was a gunsmith in Siskiyou County, CA.  The story goes that when Uncle Charley's house on the family ranch burned from a flue fire, the guns on the walls were all loaded and the volunteer fire department stayed a half mile away until they had stopped firing.  And most were percussion guns...

David

[Curtis]

SquirrelHeart, are the lands in that barrel filed down to make the grooves at the muzzle like Taylor suggests? Can you let us know? Thanks!

Ben,
Yes, I believe it is.  The lands appear to be filed back to a smooth taper, and the grooves appear to be filed deeper also for a very short distance.  I had assumed that perhaps the rifling was just a bit worn at the muzzle until I saw Taylor's post and took a closer look.  The rifle loads fairly easy with a tight patch and ball using a ramrod only. 

[Ben I. Voss]

Thank you Curtis. Very interesting!

[Gaeckle]

Well Taylor, I hadn't really planned on showing this little trick, but you just got it out of me.
 This tool is called the "Piloted Abrasive Face Mill". We drill through a piece of flat wood with our well squared drill press, glue in a dowel of suitable size, adjust the pilot diameter if we have to, punch or cut a hole in a piece of adhesive backed sand paper, stick the paper on, and there you go!
 I buy adhesive backed sanding discs to cut up and stick to this and Popsicle sticks and dowel rods. You could just use glue and regular sand paper, but this can be peeled off and replaced.
 This one was used while fitting a breech plug, for crown work I would make the pilot longer.
 In use, the mill does not do most of the metal removal, in stead it generates a shiney high spot which gets filed down a little, just like stain transfer work. When it gives an even shine all the way around, the end is square.
 

Great idea.....don't mind if I use it do you?

[Swampwalker]

That is a great idea Ben, and for those of us without metal lathes, it definitely is getting me thinking... A secton of file could be annealed, pilot hole drilled, rehardened, and used the same way to actively level the crown.  I think a longer pilot pin cut to bore diameter would also help keep things square.

[okieboy]

 Gaeckle, I not only don't mind, but hope you do, and then pass it on to someone else.

[Gaeckle]

Gaeckle, I not only don't mind, but hope you do, and then pass it on to someone else.

Sounds OK by me....thanks!

[Dogshirt]

I am re-working a CVA Hawken that I had to replace the barrel on. Bought a used barrel on ebay that
had a very nice bore. When I took it out to shoot it was VERY hard to start the ball and patch.
Upon closer examination, it looked like someone had taken one of those round stones to the crown and chewed it up pretty bad. I read in McCrory's book about crowning with a marble and valve grinding compound. So I went to the Grandson's marble box and found one that seemed to match up well.
It took about an hour while watching tv to remove all the damage, but it did work.
 And the Grandson can have his marble back if he notices it's gone.

[greybeard]

AH YES; Necessity is the mother of invention;;// or something like that.
             Bob

[bluenoser]

 

So, if crowning is not out of the realm of possibility with hand tools, what about cutting and squaring the muzzle before it is crowned?  On a straight octagon or round barrel I can see how this might be done and the waist of my barrel may have a long enough straight section to allow me to use a square and file to get it plumb, but where barrels are tapered, what is the solution for those w/o a lathe?

Use a T-bevel, which is also known as an adjustable square.  If the original muzzle is cut square, you can set the angle on the T-bevel before cutting the barrel back.  If not, you may have to set the angle by trial and error or by indexing against a barrel flat and a right angle to the centerline of the barrel.  Once you have the tool set correctly, and the muzzle cut correctly, the blade will contact both sides of the muzzle  while indexing against each flat.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,  As long as we are looking at traditional muzzle crowns.  Here is a photo of a traditional, probably 18th c muzzle crown tool.  Even though it may be ugly to us today, it probably did get the job done 200 years ago.

Jim Everett

[Swampwalker]

I have my doubts that that tool was used to crown barrels - it's angle is too shallow to be very useful, and it doesn't look like any original barrow muzzles that I've seen. 

[James Wilson Everett]

I agree, it would make a poor muzzle crown.  I have used it as a flash pan grinder with some success just to see how it works for that job.  It does just an OK job as a pan grinder and probably less than OK as a muzzle crown.  Check out the discussion under the thread "Flashpan Grinder" for the details.  I think that it was used to crown barrels, just not the best tool for the job.  I use a ball shaped one as illustrated in the Jounal of Historical Armsmaking Technology.  It works pretty well.  Thanks for your comment and your knowledge on the subject.

Jim Everett

[timM]

Interesting discussion.  For clarity's sake: 

In a rifled barrel, the lines you see (the slices cut out during the rifling process) are the "grooves". The "lands" are the sections of metal left untouched by the rifling process. 

[JohnnyM]

This type of crown has puzzled me for a long time, and I have hesitated to employ it on any of my rifles for fear that accuracy will suffer.  Now I know that I can load the combinations I'm used to with this old style of crown.  I recall an article in either "Muzzleloader" or "Muzzle Blasts" a year or so ago, where a chap discussed filing the crown into the muzzle, and at the time, I was pretty sceptical because he talked about filing the lands rather than the grooves.  Now I know he was right, and I didn't think about it again, until I learned it for myself. 

The article Mr. Sapergia, I believe, is referring to is titled "By Frequent Trials and Wanderings" authored by Mark A. Baker in the July/August 2007 issue in Muzzleloader Magazine.  Baker features gunbuilder Mike Miller and his technique for coning a barrel with a small round file.  No special tool and certainly no machinery needed.  There's some good photos of Miller plying his "magic" to a barrel as well as the finished crown.

Quoting the article: "To uncover the secrets of Colonial-era coning, Mike studied scores of original barrels, looking for signs of how the original gun stockers performed the 'witchcraft' on the barrels."

"Eventually, Mike found the perfect way to cone that is both aesthetically pleasing and historically correct while keeping the accuracy intact."

Mr. Miller is quoted in the article, "Maybe the old masters knew what they were doing way back then without our more modern and sophisticated help."

Check it out!
Regards,
Johnny