Any tricks to inletting a tapered round barrel?

[Chris Treichel]

Are there any tricks to inletting a tapered round barrel? Already drilled down to depth and cut down half the diameter of the barrel as with an octagonal barrel... Right now just using inletting black, a french curve scraper and an offset gouge. The scraper seems to be doing the best job... slow but getting there. It doesn't help that the woodgrain seems to change direction about half way down the channel.

[rich pierce]

Brownells sells a round scraper thingy with sharpened washers on it.  It ccomes with different diameter washers if you order all the options.  It can be pressed sideways to good effect if you're good at maintaining control.  I use gouges a lot.

[T*O*F]

One of the woodworking stores sells a set of round scrapers.  They come in two pieces with each piece having several profiles from 1/4" up to 1-1/2".  They are 1/2 the depth of the diameter.  For a tapered barrel, you would use several of the profiles to blend your inlet to size, by turning the next larger size slightly sideways as you scrape.

ps....it's Lee Valley.  Part #33T08.55  Convex scrapers pr.  $11.50

[Acer Saccharum]

For a round inlet, you can use a #5 sweep gouge ACROSS the grain, using parallel cuts, advancing down the barrel, one nibble at a time. Take a complete pass, and start again, a little deeper and wider.Then finish up with one of those scrapey thing Rich mentions to level out the channel. One of those antique round soled planes would work, too.

[Chris Treichel]

Thank you for the advice... Scraping it is... I can deal with that.

[Habu]

The times I've done it, I'd start with an undersize barrel channel and scrape to fit.  The tool mentioned by Rich works well, but it is easy to take a bit too much with it.  Then again, it might help if I inlet round barrels more than every other presidential election year . . .