.38 caliber barrel signe J D at the muzzle for a change.

[Jacob_S_P]

This barrel came off my first *original* an absolutely terrible parts gun I bought cheap at a pawn shop. However the barrel is very nice.
Ideas of barrel maker?

[Tanselman]

It's an odd place to find initials, and suggests the barrel may have been re-used off another earlier rifle. If so, it was cut off at the old breech and "turned around" in the next gun, so the initials now appear near the muzzle end of the new rifle. You do not mention the length of the current barrel to see if it might have been shortened...but that would be good to know in assessing this barrel. Shelby Gallien

[Jacob_S_P]

Now that is an interesting idea. Now that you mention it, it is 37" long, and at the muzzle end looking at the breech end - there is a swamp that measures .950, while at the muzzle end it is .830 and the swamp is very defined and even.
Also there is a missing underloop near the breech plug as you can see in this pic.

[Tanselman]

The old barrel loop scar a few inched past your current breech plug pretty much tells the story. At 37 inches, the barrel was probably about 43 to 44 inches when new. It would have been cut about an inch at the original muzzle to remove the old front sight and to provide a clean, new surface for the new/current breech plug. The old barrel was then shortened another 5 or 6 inches at the old breech to reach today's 37 inches. Since they had cut so much off the old breech, and lost most of the swamping at that end, they flipped the barrel so the old muzzle swamping was now at the new breech to put the heavier/wider end of the barrel at that end, presumably for more strength at the breech where the charge explodes. Shelby Gallien

[Jacob_S_P]

Thank you sir. That is an excellent explanation and makes perfect sense.
Would love to confirm who 'J D' was, out of curiosity. The barrel really is quite nice. I hate it was done so.... But alas.

[Avlrc]

I seen a backaction gun  a couple days ago, signed J D in script.  Had a patchbox.  Never had a camera or would of posted pics.  The owner thought it was made by Doherty.   or something like that, but he was just guessing.

[Jacob_S_P]

I appreciate the thought, the initials will turn up again and we will figure it out someday. Thanks for thinking of it! Wierd how we read something here and see something later that correlates to it and it sparks the brain and the information flows.
Not sure I mentioned it, but when I acquired this "rifle" it had a back lock and decent triggers. Everything else was wrong.