Barrel Scraping

[Bob Gerard]

Out of curiosity I am wondering if gun barrels were/are scraped for final smoothing. I’m looking at an old, round Fowler barrel and it appears to have hand scraped striations along the length of the barrel that are not file marks (as best as I can tell).

[rich pierce]

Would draw filing give a different look?  If I tried scraping a barrel I’d use a concave scraper with a radius not a lot bigger than the barrel’s radius to get a wide contact patch.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

I make my own barrels without using modern machine tools.  Round barrels are more of a challenge than octagon barrels.  Starting with the forged iron surface i file an octagon (8 sides) to a 16 side shape to a 32 side shape to a 64 side shape.  This is followed by a final polish.  So, a period barrel often will tend to have the feature as you have found.  When doing a gunsmith show-n-tell I let visitors rotate a "round" barrel in their hands as they discover that they are not perfectly round at all but actually a series of tiny flats as your photo shows.

As an aside, I let the visitors sight down the flats of a hand made octagon barrel, not perfect either.

Jim

[bob in the woods]

I have used a scraper on barrel flats. Depends on the barrel material .

[Eric Krewson]

Not knowing better, I didn't draw file my fowler barrel except on the octagon part, the round part is not even close to being even and smooth, it almost looks like it has tiny bulges in places. It is finished and on my fowler anomalies and all, one does have to get the light just right and know what to look for to see what I should have corrected.

[Daryl]

Interesting barrel, Bob. Makes me think of the US troops rubbing all of their musket's parts, with the or "a" steel rod, to make them shiny.

[Bob Gerard]

Daryl- it is a really interesting barrel inside and out. Whoever worked on it was careful and creative with it.

[Daryl]

That one looks like it was sanded lengthwise, with 60 grit and a LOT of pressure.
Cool muzzle treatment.

[Robert Wolfe]

I've drawfiled oct-round barrels to remove machining marks and have ended up with a barrel marked like that if I don't then use sand paper on it.

[JasonR]

Those narrow striations are likely from a firmly held, slightly concave scraper moving at a fast pace. Easy enough to mellow those out with hard-backed sanding. But if not, it's character!