Barrel Freshening - HDTDT

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

HDTDT = How Did They Do That?  These tools are from the gunshop of the Fry family of gunsmiths, Ligonier, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and are mid 19th c.  There is about 100 - 150 freshening rods shown in the box, mostly for rifle barrels.  Freshening was the process used to recut the entire interior surface of the barrel.  I believe that this was done frequently, perhaps every year.  I surmise that each freshening would enlarge the bore by a few thousanths of an inch.  So, over the active life of a rifle barrel, many generations, the caliber would increase by a significant measure.



The individual rods have a wood shaft and a cast lead body showing the barrel rifling grooves.  Cutters were inlet into the lead, one to recut the barrel lands, and a second to cut the barrel grooves.  I surmise that they were used individually, and not both at once.



The lead to wood rod intersection includes a copper joint pin.  The wood to push/pull rod joint is reinforced by a brass collar.





The cutter was made of hardened steel with teeth oriented at 45 degrees to the bore axis.  These teeth are symmetrical in that they would cut as well on the pull stroke as on the pull stroke.  Cutter height was adjusted by paper shims.





Jim Everett

[William Worth]

Wow, that process looks harsh.

To cut properly, I suppose the cutter would tend to track in the existing grooves?  I wonder how often mis-cuts or stripping would result from this procedure? 

[rich pierce]

I have not seen cutters with that sort of spiral "tooth" before, thanks.  It would be interesting to know the calibers of the freshing rods!  About how long are the lead laps?

[Robby]

I haven't seen a cutter like that either.  Is that cutter used just for freshening? it looks like it is formed to clean up the bottom and maybe leading edge of the groove. Pretty neat!!
Robby

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

Thanks for the questions, keep it up!  The rifle barrel freshening rod used as the example is 0.41 outside diameter - this would translate to the barrel groove diameter, giving a caliber of about 0.39.  The overall length is 12.3 inches and it has 8 grooves.  The cutter shown in the detail photo is for freshening the barrel land.  It is nearly twice as wide as the cutter for the groove and is rounded on top to roughly match the curve of the bore diameter.  The cutting edges are sharp.  The cutter dimensions are 0.906 long, 0.158 wide and 0.240 high.  The groove cutter is about 0.075 wide and 0.950 long, I did not remove it from the lead, but I assume it is also about 0.24 high.

Jim Everett

[Robby]

I used this same method to freshen a .50 caliber barrel that had been badly neglected. It was a long, drawn out affair, but the end result was well worth it, a tack driving .52 cal.. Thanks for the pictures.
Robby

[David R. Pennington]

Thanks so much for posting these how they did its. This is the kind of stuff I love to see and learn about. Love the pictures of original tools etc,.. Thanks again!

[okieboy]

 The saw is very interesting. The freshing or frisching saws that I have made had the teeth cut with a triangular file before hardening, which made them easy to touch up with a triangular stone. The person that taught me how to freshen made his land saws on a lathe, so the O.D. of the saw was the same as the bore of the barrel; then the sides were flattened and the two remaining halves sawn apart, producing two cutters. The cutter you show "could" have been made the same way, running a file repetitively along a relatively slow running lathe.
 Obviously the rods that you show could only be pushed through the unbreeched barrel, but the lead guide can be cast on a wooden rod longer than the barrel when removal of the breech plug is a problem, with the toothed saw cutting in both directions.
 Thank you so much for posting so many interesting old tools.

[James Wilson Everett]

Okieboy,

Yes, I can tell that you have experience with this sort of thing.  Looking closely at the cutter I believe that I can see the marks of a file down in the valleys of the cutter, probably that slight rounded corner that you find on larger triangular files.  The cutting edges are a lot smoother so I assume that they have been sharpened and resharpened with a thin stone.  I doubt if this was lathe made since such would require a highly complex multiple thread pitch setup.  However, that being said, the uniformity of the tooth spacing is really excellent, surely better than I can do.  We must remember that the Fry gunsmiths probably freshened barrels a half bazillion times, so they got pretty good at doing it.  Thank for the comment.

Jim Everett

[okieboy]

 Jim, what I meant by lathe made was done by hand and eye with a file, the lathe only used to rotate the piece. This isn't as difficult as it might seem to some; one draws one spiral line, cuts it a bit then moves over a little and starts another. As I'm sure you already know the basic technique is used by wood workers to make spiraled legs and such freehand.
 By the way, I make my cutters with vee teeth and make the teeth on the ends slightly and progressively lower, so they will enter the bore from breech or muzzle without the need of any coneing. Still freshing is not work for the impatient.

[The other DWS]

Out of curiosity,  for what reasons would a barrel be "freshened"?
I don't see how soft lead and a patch would wear a barrel out
I can imagine that corrosion due to less frequent cleaning that we are accustomed to might be a factor.   would the older steels and especially the  welded barrels be softer and simply wear more.

[rich pierce]

It is often said that wrought iron is softer and wore faster but I have my doubts about that.  As said above, how much shootiing would it take for a cloth patch to wear out a barrel.  Also wrought iron is more resistant to corrosion than modern mild steels.  I think it was the practices of the day, leaving a gun loaded after shooting it, that must have led to greater corrosion.  I have seen barrels so pitted out that there is no other explanation that makes sense to me except poorer maintenance.  I know folks will argue, "that doesn't make sense that a man would not take care of his rifle" but evidence says otherwise.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

I hope this does not wander off into the attributes of wrought iron, but here goes.  Wrought iron is most certainly more corrosion resistant than steel, especially when water is present.  When I do a show-n-tell with the rifling machine often the barrel gets soaked by rain/dew, yet it shows very little rust.  A modern steel barrel would be bright orange under the same circumstances.  However, even refined wrought iron has a higher surface porosity than steel due to the slag streak inclusions throughout.  These tiny hairlike slag streaks gives plenty of perfect hiding places for the nasty burned powder gunk.  You can clean a wrought iron barrel really thoroughly and still get more gunk out the next day.  I clean a wrought iron barrel daily for at least two weeks after shooting before all those nasties are gone.  I am convinced that corrosion was the culprit, not wear, as most of the above comments have stated.

I can guess that a shooter who wished to take very good care of his rifle would have it freshened very often to prevent corrosion from forming deep pits in the metal.  From the evidence in the Fry family gunsmith tooling collection, freshening was their major function.

Jim Everett

[The other DWS]

so "freshening" was more of a light scraping and scouring of the existing rifling rather than really recutting the rifling.


 In the later early cartridge era rifles were often "freshened" to the next size up.  Pope recut 32 calibers to 33 etc.
However too the introduction of the cap and later primers introduced a whole new witches brew of corrosive chemicals. perhaps the later "freshening" used the same tools and techniques but removed more barrels material as corrosion became a more serious problem

Just WAG-ING

[Robby]

Rich, I agree that lack of proper care and maintenance is the cause the cause of the corrosion we see today, but i still think the first, second, and probably at least third generation owner, probably kept it in good order. Its when newer and better gear comes along and is maintained and cared for that these guns were finally neglected. I think .
Robby

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

Here is a photo of the groove cutter bit from the Fry family freshining rods.  Besides being much more narrow than the land cutter bit, it lacks the arc and the rounded edges.  I guess this makes sense.  Think about this for a minute - how many original rifle barrels in collections have square bottom grooves today, but were made originally with round bottom grooves?  Repeated freshenings could easily have altered the groove shape.

Jim Everett

[Dphariss]

so "freshening" was more of a light scraping and scouring of the existing rifling rather than really recutting the rifling.


 In the later early cartridge era rifles were often "freshened" to the next size up.  Pope recut 32 calibers to 33 etc.
However too the introduction of the cap and later primers introduced a whole new witches brew of corrosive chemicals. perhaps the later "freshening" used the same tools and techniques but removed more barrels material as corrosion became a more serious problem

Just WAG-ING

"Freshing" a cartridge rifle is simply not practical. Pope made 33s because he thought they shot better. I think the first one was done as a result of a error of flaw. But remember that Pope made breech ML guns and they did not use fixed ammo. A a 32-40 chamber would work with a 33-47 Schuetzen rifle. And Pope was fully capable or making a chamber reamer. But cutting a 44-77 out to a 45-46 caliber was not practical. Many Sharps 44-77 were already 45 in the groove so any enlargement simply would not work.
Wear was not an issue unless erosive powders were used. There was neglect and damage but this was not fixable in cartridge guns by "freshing". I think Pope claimed his personal rifle had shot over 100000 rounds with no change in accuracy and no change in dimension. Would have to hit the books again to be sure. Blackpowder and lead bullets simply produces no wear.

Freshing a ML required removing metal until the bore was clean and uniform in dimension or to the diameters and condition the person doing the work desired, choked, freed etc.
A light cleaning is easier done by lapping. So I assume that a freshing required taking out several thousandths on a side probably as much as .010 on a side in some cases.

Dan

[The other DWS]

Probably Pope was not the best name to cite,   a bunch of the other "schuetzen" gunsmiths had older and deeper roots in the pre-cartidge ML schuetzen/target rifle tradition. 
  I'm suspecting that the term "freshen" has probably entered the common gun-lore vocabulary to describe a range of barrel internal alterations from lapping to anything short of reboring and re-rifling.

  I'm very appreciative of the posting of this material and the photos.  It really helps me to get a better understanding of historic period gun-building and maintenance.  however it generated more questions----
Is this Fry family collection the norm for a long established family of gunsmiths; or some sort of specialty thing catering perhaps to a regional community of dedicated target shooters who demanded gilt-edge accuracy?   
Any thoughts as to why so may were preserved?  It seems to me to be a basic cast lead lapping rod with a slot for the cutter bits. Were barrel rifling dimensions so uniform as to allow one "fresher" to be used on a bunch of different barrels just by shimming the cutting bit?

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

To answer some of these questions with authority, we would have to get these old tools to speak.  Unfortunately we are left with the option of trying our best to reconstruct what actually happened from these mute tools.

I do not think that a lap or a freshening rod could be used in more than one barrel as the differences between barrel dimensions would preclude that.  For instance, I use 1-56 twist for my barrels, while the neighboring smith may have used 1-58 twist.  (Mine is the best - of course)  I do think that a freshening rod was kept year to year for use in the same barrel as the customer brought it back for the yearly freshening.  When you cast one of these rods it takes a good long while and a lot of fiddling around until they are able to slide easily in the bore without a cutter at all.  When I cast a rod, it needs whacks with a mallet to get it to move at all.  If the gunsmith kept a rod for use next year, it would save a lot of time.  This would also explain why the Fry's kept so very many freshening rods in their shop instead of remaking them for the next barrel. 

If the old freshening rod or lap gets too loose, it can be enlarged easily by hitting the end of the rod (in the barrel) with a metal bore size rod.  This causes the lead to expand to fit the barrel bore.  Now the rod is tight again.

Jim Everett

[Hudnut]

I've been following this thread because I have two originals desperately in need of new bores.  One is a Pennsylvania Rifles Works long barrelled half stocked .31, the other is a heavy half stocked .45.  This one is really rough, but was a nice rifle with silver inlays when made.  Muzzle is turned for a starter, so it might have been intended to shoot conicals.  I could have a go at freshening them.  If it didn't work out, sleeving would always be a fall back option.
I did rifle one barrel from scratch, using a second barrel as a guide, with a saw inlet into the cutting head.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

Here is another tool from the Fry gunsmith collection that is somewhat similar to the rifle barrel freshening tool.  But, this tool is used to smooth the interior of a smoothbored barrel.  The Journal of Historical Armsmaking Technology calls it a hone.  As with the freshening rod it has a wood shaft and a cast lead rod with an inset cutter.  Apparently it was pushed/pulled through a smoothbore barrel to correct corrosion or roughness.  There are a few of these in the collection, but the rifle freshening rods far outnumber the smoothbore freshening rods.  I surmise that the corrosion issue was as prevalent in the smoothbores as it was in the rifles, but that it did not effect the gun performance much.

The missing cutter is very much more wide than the rifle freshening cutters.

Has anyone ever used something like this?  I have not, I use an armory reamer to smooth out the bores on my barrels.

Jim Everett

[LynnC]

James,
I've not used the tool you showed above but I've read it is also called a "float" and used to cut/scrape out the worn rifling to make a smoothbore.

[James Wilson Everett]

Lynn,

Thanks for the response.  I like the term "float" better, so we will call it by that name.  It makes more sense than "freshening" a smoothbore!  Anyway, here is another one from the Fry collection with the cutter still attached.  Notice the bluge in the lead where the cutter is inserted.  I guess that this did not matter with a smoothbore.  Maybe later I will go and float my barrel - Ha!

Jim Everett

[Don Getz]

Rich.......you said you had never seen a cutter like this.    If you go down into the basement of Dixon's shop you will see the
Harntraft brothers cutting a new barrel.   If you look at the cutter you will find that it is similar to what is shown above.  They
are not freshing, but are cutting a new barrel, but the cutter is similar to one being freshed.   The cutter has three pyramid
shaped cutters, on an angle, and is merely scraping the metal.  They do rifle a barrel in about two days, however, bear in mind
that they do a lot of talking or explaining during this time.   The finished barrel is ready to shoot when they get the grooves
deep enough..........no need to lap it...........Don

[LynnC]

James,

Somewhat off topic but I would be interested in your smooth boring tools, armorers bits / square reamers.  Mine are made from ground files and square tool steel backed by wood with tissue shims.  Man do they cut (scrape) SLOW.  I guess I'm looking for any new (old) tricks of the trade    Used in a brace, the square reamer sure is great for building arm strength 

Thanks,
Lynn