I appreciate everyone's comments, good to hear from you again Ed and James!
Curtis, could you share some more detail about the barrel finishing process with the iron pipe?
Dave, there is a wealth of information in this set of postings from the tutorial section that Acer copied over from the old board:
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=918.0Here is what I did in a nutshell. First I draw filed and polished the barrel to 600 grit. Then I took an old scrap pipe that I dug up on my place, which may have been an old drive shaft or a makeshift drain pipe. (there was once an old log house here long gone before I bought the property) After cleaning the dirt out of it I tack welded a cap on one end with a rod protruding into the center of the pipe about eight inches. I then welded on a couple of lugs and attached some scrap heavy guage wire for a handle. I stood the pipe on the capped end and poured about 5 inches if granulated charcoal in the tube. I then filled the breached barrel with within 2" of the muzzle using granulated charcoal, and stuffed a small wad of paper in the barrel to hold the charcoal in place.
I placed a cardboard tube in the pipe centered on the rod, the type of tube a barrel is shipped in. This was done to prevent scratching the barrel as it was lowered inside. Charcoal was poured into the tube a plastic cupful at a time, and I slowly raised the tube as I went, keeping the barrel centered. By the time the barrel was half covered it became obvious the barrel would hold it's position as long as the charcoal was packed around it. I wired a plate over the other end, utilizing lugs I had welded near the end of the pipe.
A fire was built in a pit, a couple of feet longer than the pipe assembly and about 18 inches deep. When a nice bed of coals was ready, I spread the coals across the bottom of the pit and lowered the assembly onto the coals, then began building the fire to surround and cover the tube, and kept the fire going for a couple of hours.
In this photo you can see a small Altoids tin with granulated charcoal and some small screws in it, as well as an end of the pipe assembly.
Staring to cover with more wood:
After the fire burned down a bit I removed the tube and let it cool for an hour or two and carefully removed the barrel and gave the still warm barrel a coat of linseed oil. The next day I applied several coats of paste wax.
There has to be a dozen better methods to achieve the same thing, but this way the only expense I had was the charcoal and some labor.
Curtis
