barrel channel cutter

[yip]

  is there anyone out there selling barrel channel cutting tools? any ideas ?

[Hungry Horse]

 Take a GOOD quality spade bit, the same size as your barrel. Place the muzzle over the bottom of the bit, and scribe the three lower flats. Grind the point, and two side flats to your scribed lines (slowly so you don't overheat the metal). CHECK THE ROTATION OF YOUR ROUTER!!! And, grind the cutting edges accordingly. You will not need to put much, if any bevel to the sides of the bit. Chuck it into your router, and be prepared to make many small cutting passes. It works fine. Just don't buy junk spade bits.

                  Hungry Horse

[yip]

 thanks hungry horse; i did that before, but thought there was a commerical cutter out there somewhere.  thanks again................yip

[whetrock]

are you looking for machine tools or hand tools (planes, etc.) ?

[yip]

whetlock; i'm looking for a router bit. cooperstown trading post used to make these, and they worked great , but they stopped making them.

[T*O*F]

Router method:

1.  Mark your stock where the breech will be located.


2.  Get a pair of straight pine boards.  Put one on either side of your blank.  Place them on a flat surface, and clamp them together with your clamps on the bottom and allow enough clearance for your router fence to clear.  Both sides of your blank must be planed smooth but the top doesn't have to be.  The two boards compensate for that.



3.  Put your barrel against the front of the blank and trace the outline of the barrel.  Then extend the lines of the side flats to the top of the blank.


4.  Now draw lines A, B, and C.  You will cut to line A depth on your first pass with a square bit. I use a 3/4" bit which usually requires that you make the first pass, move the fence, and cut a second pass.  You now have a square groove the width of your barrel flats.  Drop your router down to line B and repeat.  Your groove is now to the depth of the bottom of the side flats. 
Change your bit to a V cutter and repeat to cut to line C.  You will have a small bit of material left on the bottom flat which can be removed with a chisel.


Notes on step 4:  Your stock should be a bit longer than your barrel as you will get some nicks until the fence centers itself.  Make sure you stop at your breech line at the back.  It is often obscured by the plate on your router.




Obviously in the above pictures, your side boards will have to extend past your breech mark and all cuts are made from the lock side.  Your channel is now cut to the full depth of the barrel.  Saw it off to line A above which will put your channel to the center of the side flats.  Hand fit as necessary.  I have tried this using a router table, but the chips get caught behind the cutter and will force it off your line.  I used this method for years before I got a set of shaper bits which would cut a channel in one pass.  The barrels always fit fine and I never overcut one.  However one could easily make the channel oversized if not correctly set up to your lines.

[b bogart]

I have used a similar method as Dave except I used angle iron in place of the side  boards. I also ground a set of router bits 3/4" to 1" by 1/8" increments. Used big Vee type, ground slowly until I got to the bottom flat demension, then ground the sides until the barrel ATF was achieved. Slowly and alot of cooling. They work fine but take quite a few passes.

[yip]

t*o*f*    thanks for the reply , your idea sounds, great i'll give it a try. the smallest width of my flared barrel is .700 thousands, so i have to go do so figuring.

[T*O*F]

Obviously my method is only good for a straight barrel.  A friend had a more complex method using strips of metal bent to the contour of the barrel, but I don't remember exactly how he did it.  I think he used cutters with bearings on them.

[b bogart]

Yea Dave but if you have the smallest dimension of the barrel routed out the final fitting of the taper/swamp is not that much more work to accomplish, in my humble opinion.

[fm tim]

Homer Dangler's video on building longrifles shows a straightforward router fixture for cutting barrel channels.  He uses a plywood template shaped to the barrel curve as a guide for the router for swamped barrels.  It would work for any reasonable swamped, tapered, or straight barrel.

[yip]

 i would like ta see that!

[Dphariss]

1 1/4" barrel. Cutter was too small lots of passes.


Its a 90 degree carbide end mill.
Dan

[Hungry Horse]

 A friend of mine has a complete set (from 13/16" to 1-1/8th)  carbide router bits, designed to cut  barrel channels, but they are not marked as to who made them. He bought them about twenty years ago.

                       Hungry Horse

[fastfrankie]

Whiteside Machine company (in my opinion one of the finest manufacturers of router bits) will custom make any router bit, you just have to send them a drawing of what you want.

[welafong1]

hi

 i for one am a little bit slow i can not see doing a swamped barrel channel with a rotor can someone show me the light?
thank you
richard westerfield

[yip]

 well i finally did it, i cut a spape bite for the size of the smallest part of the barrel, "3/4", filed the dickens out of it. it worked  fine, now the chiseling starts, here we gooo

[Danny H.]

I for one am interested in finding hand tools, scrapers, planes, whatever. I'm guessing that anything store bought will need to be modified. Any suggestions on a few good tools to start with?

[yip]

 i made a router bit out of a spade bit, it worked grrrrreat.the barrel is inletted now, only 5 passes with the bit, all the rest done by hand. thanks fellas!

[Danny H.]

yip, did you use the meathod/ fixture T*O*F showed in the photo?

[KentSmith]

I'm old fashioned.  I stand under the chestnut tree and do it the old fashioned way. Here is why - long winded sorry.

 I used to set up like TOF described for straight octagon barrels.  For swamped I had a jig that used a plywood form (see Homer Dangler ref above) that was made up to match the contour of the barrel.  I took a 3 inch wide 4 foot long piece of 7/8" plywood, laid the barrel on it lengthwise and carefully drew the contour of the barrel sides on the plywood, then ripped the plywood down the middle of the lines.  Went to the bandsaw and sawed along the contour lines carefully and cleaned up the cut maintaining the pencil line. To the inside (straight line) of plywood I would screw a 1 1/2 inch 1/8" mild steel flat and to the contour cut I would screw a 3" X 1/16 X 48" mild steel flat.  I clamped the straight sides to the blank.  The outer 3" wide steel flat on each side acting as my fence.  Just picture TOF's photo with a plywood insert between the blank and the wooden fence and you get my drift.

Of course this doesn't work for a swamped barrel.

Up to now you have a barrel inlet in along the horizontal axis.  What about the vertical axis.  Before doing anything lay the stock blank its side with the lock side facing up.  Lay the barrel on the side of the blank and find the position you want it to be when inletting is finished.  Mark the breech line and draw a line tracing the bottom of the barrel.  Remove the barrel. Your plywood contour forms should match this line.  If not check everything again. Now take your calibers and find the midpoint of the barrel - the line the stock will come up to on the sides of the barrel when the inletting is done.  Trace that line on the stock blank. You should now have the barrel bottom line and the barrel mid point line. Go to the bandsaw and cut the stock along the barrel mid point line.  Of course now the router will not go all the way to your breech line when you route it because the router base is too wide so your going to have to chisel your way to nirvana anyway but you will have a groove that follows the contour of the barrel along the x-axis and the y-axis at the same time.
 
Now I found this was all a pain in the a** and took more time than chisels, forstner bits, and a barrel scraper.  I can do a 42" b-wt swamped barrel in a little over an hour, I did a pistol this weekend in 20 minutes and it is tight, I can keep the sides tight and no it is not near perfect but I sweat it out at the muzzle and keep it as true a s I can without losing sleep over it.  And when I am done, I know exactly what the grain is doing along my forearm.  I'd rather hire someone to route out my barrel and drill my ramrod holes but they are getting scarce, expensive and too busy for me so though I don't have a chestnut tree, I'd rather do it the old way. I'd rather spend time setting up a drilling jig for my ramrod and seeing if that drill bit from TOTW really does drill straight holes.

Small lengths of barrel cutoffs welded to a handle make great scrapers.


one for bwt 38" up to c-wt 44" and making the contours for each barrel (and you really need to do it for each barrel because not all b-wt 38" barrels are equal) but I digress.I used a more flexible 1/16" mild steel fence replacing the TOF's board clamped to the side of the blank.  Router run the same way following the curved fence.  Did a good job and the barrels fit after some clean up as long as I made the plywood contour form for each barrel.

[KentSmith]

I meant to add I also ended up needing a plywood form not only for each different size and length of barrel but often for for each barrel even when the weight and length were the same, ie, Colerain b-wt 38" may be different between different barrels.  ask any stock carver why they need the barrel each time they cut a barrel channel.  Rice seems fairly consistent.  But I ended up with a stack of plywood barrel contours forms and if I wanted perfection had to make a new on for each barrel.

[Rich]

You might want to look at a core box plane. It will cut a semicircular groove, any width and depth. I've used one and it worked, but you have to watch that the plane doesn't destroy the top edge of the barrel channel. It works best to cut the barrel channel width by hand, rough out the channel and use the plane to establish the sides and bottom. If you leave a little extra height on the top of the channel, you can then use a scrapper to go from a round bottom channel to an octagon. I believe the planes were a 19th century invention for foundry work.

[Kermit]

Haven't thought about core box planes in a very long time! Pretty simple tools, actually. You should be able make one if you look at Google Images and this photo. Go fer it.

http://www.jonzimmersantiquetools.com/tools/core_box.jpg

[Hungry Horse]

 I have a Workmate portable work bench dedicated to barrel inletting. I also use angle iron rails, as someone mentioned before. I find the Workmate to be the best stock securing system I've found so far. It allows you to work from either side, and after permanently spacing the rails with some welded on, end irons,  I even was able to cant the rails to get cast off in the stock. I secure the rails to the bench with modified C clamps. I suggest at least a 1 H.P. router, and if at all possible, carbide bits. The Workmate allows one to secure the blank with the side panels facing upward, for inletting locks, and side plates. I use a Dremel with the router handle attachment,for this, and a small flat ended bit to hog out the center of the lock plate inlet, and final cut the perimeters, and lock internals, with a fine hand tools. I actually have two Workmates, because I found one isn't long enough for most long rifles, and fowlers. And, I hate taking the stock out, and moving it forward, so, I coupled two of them together, with specially made clamps, that fit through the peg hole from below, so as not to interfere with the work surface. I am fortunate to have a friend that saw the value of owning a set of carbide barrel inletting bits when they were available, and bought the entire set, and graciously allows me to use them.

                     Hungry Horse