barrel channel cutter

[davec2]

re-post from a while back:


A long while back I needed to inlet a few 13/16 straight barrels and got really tired of inletting by hand.  (This was long before there were people who did this for you perfectly on a pantograph machine....and before I gave up on straight barrels)  I made a hand plane that would cut the required shape, but it was still slow.  Then I made a special router bit that worked OK, but the fit was not all that consistent.  But in the corner of my shop, I have a 50 or 60 year old cast iron shaper that I never really used very much.  However, I made the cutter below for it and it will cut a beautiful barrel channel that fits like a glove full depth in one pass in maple.  The second picture is a piece of maple scrap with a channel cut.





I am building a pair of 3/4 scale rifles now - .32 cal old Douglas barrels that I have milled down to .690 across the flats.  The final photo is of a barrel channel cutter I had made to cut the .690 channels on the old shaper shown next to my original shaper cutter.  Although these are obviously only good for straight barrels, I have also used them to hog away 90% of the wood for a swamped barrel and finished with a hand inlet.

[David R. Pennington]

I recently found an old Stanley plow plane with no cutters. I forged a cutter and experimented with it on barrel inlet. Works great after sides are established.

[bedbugbilly]

Years ago, a single knife "moulding head" was available through Sears (Craftsman) in which a variety of 1" profiled moulding cutters could be utilized.  The head was "balanced for the single knife - it could be used on either a table saw or a radial arm saw.  After this was marketed, Vermont American marketed a 3 knife head - the moulding knives were identical to the Sears knives.  I have one of the Sears single knife heads and I made different size cutters for inletting straight octagon barrels by profile grinding the 1 inch cutting knives that were straight and designed for cutting either a 1" dado or for cutting half lap joints on board edges.

I mount the moulding head in my table saw with a throat plate that I made for it.  I clamp a hardwood fence so that the stock blank will feed between them with the cutter in the correct position in the stock and after I've marked the stock where I want the barrel channel to end at the breech that corresponds with a mark on the fence where I need to stop, I make three or four runs, raising the moulding head each time until the barrel channel is cut to the correct depth.

This has worked well for me and  then the only hand work required is to finish the inlet at the breech area to remove the radius formed by the cutter.  Before making any runs on the stock, I make a sample cut on a piece of wood the same thickness as my blank to double check my alignment and depth.