Forged welded difference to early iron barrel....

[gizamo]

How can you discern the difference? Is there a way to identify between the two?

Giz

[Mark Elliott]

I don't understand the question.   I believe all barrels were welded until around the Civil War.   You shouldn't see weld on ones that were welded.

[gizamo]

Remington transitioned to cast steel barrels by the 1840's. I am wondering if the English might have done this earlier.  Is there a way to tell the difference between a cast steel barrel and a hand forged barrel from the same era?

Giz

[Bob Roller]

Remington transitioned to cast steel barrels by the 1840's. I am wondering if the English might have done this earlier.  Is there a way to tell the difference between a cast steel barrel and a hand forged barrel from the same era?

Giz

Joseph Whitworth was making barrels from what was called "Fluid Compressed Steel" in the 1850's.
My understanding is that molten steel,not iron was poured around a mandrel and then before it
solidified,it was compressed to close any flaws or fissures that could have occurred during the casting
process.Whitworth's long range shooting experiments of the time mandated a strong barrel and he
was being paid by the British Government to find why the Enfield rifles were so inaccurate from one
gun to the next. Lack of uniform dimensions was the problem and he proved it with methods of precise
measurement that were unknown at the time. A bullet of over 500 grains was required but Whitworth,
instead of staying with the 577 went to a 451 with a hexagonal rifling pattern and the improvement in
accuracy was startling. The 451 could hit a dinner plate at 500 yards and the 577 couldn't come close.

Bob Roller

[Ky-Flinter]

A lot of items made of cast steel (barrels, knives, chisels, etc.) were actually marked "Cast Steel".  I hesitated to say "most" items were so marked, but the fact that a product was made of cast steel was something the maker would want to advertise.

The old, likely forged, barrels that I have seen were filed and finished better on the top flats and less so on the bottom flats.

-Ron

[David R. Pennington]

Items marked "cast steel" was an admission to the type of material used and related to the process in which the raw material was made. These individual items, especially knives or tools, were usually forged from "cast" steel bar stock as opposed to "wrought" iron.
I have seen original hand forged barrels with marks left from the hammer on the bottom side where the file work was not completely done. One of our makers had a contemporary piece at Boonesborough year or two ago and I noticed the "grain" in the barrel iron and immediately recognized it as wrought iron and assumed it was a forged barrel. Turns out it was original wrought iron bar he had a modern barrel maker drill and profile.
As mark stated the welds should not readily be apparent if they were sound welds, but the wrought iron is often discernable from steel by the grainy structure with minor streaks often apparent on the surface.
I was always amazed by the original process and in disbelief as to how it was even possible until I got the opportunity to actually try it. (exerimental archeology!) What I then realized is that the compression of the iron near the center of the tube at welding heat makes it much less likely for a flaw to occur there than on the outside, and flaws on the outside regularly occur from stretching, but these are visible and easily re-welded. It actually works!

[Hungry Horse]

 A large number of barrel makers that transitioned from wrought iron barrels, to fluid steel barrels, marked their barrels either "fluid steel", or "wart steel" primarily because it was a selling point. Unless the barrel is in very poor condition it will be obvious to the naked eye that they are either steel or iron. the grain in wright iron is easily seen in most barrels, and usually not hidden on the underside of most old barrels.

  Hungry Horse

[doug]

  The welded barrels that I have seen, were not apparent until the barrel was refinished on the outside.  Collective shrieks of horror no doubt, at refinishing, but the 1842 Springfield had a single longitudinal weld in the barrel and was apparently made from flat bar formed into a tube then forge welded.  Remington barrels were reported to be rolled to dimension starting in the 1840s and I wonder if that is what is meant by fluid compressed steel.  Some English barrels were rolled from the 1850s on and began as a short 6 inch long and 3 inch diameter blank with a hole drilled or punched (depending on date) in the center and run presumably red hot, through a series of rollers to achieve the correct outer dimensions.   All iron prior to 1854, I would expect to be either wrought iron or modified from wrought iron because the bessemer process used to create fluid homogenous iron / steel was not introduced until that date.  It appears to have been widely used after that time

cheers Doug

[tim crowe]

Its a broad question that could go many ways , could you clarify? Just curious. From smith to smith there are a world of differences in how the barrel is welded, ie bore finished closer to size in welding, outside finished octagon, depends on the smith.
 The whole point of welding a barrel was to get a full length hole through a piece of Wrought Iron.  Wrought Iron characteristics of easy welding, made it outstanding in this application.There was not deep hole drilling technology at the time.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

A note:  In all probability the Remington barrels, both wrought iron and steel, were made by the process of drilling a short & heavy barrel blank, then forging or rolling to lengthen and make more slender.  The Remington barrels did not have a seam weld, they tended to be straight (not tapered or swamped) and tended to have an off center bore that was normally placed at the breech end.  Apparently, Remington never patented this process, keeping it a trade secret.  If I find an original with a nicely uniform, straight barrel, I assume that it is one of these barrels.  I think that the forged welded barrels tended to be tapered or swamped.

Later on, in 1860 (Patent 27,539) the Remington process was improved allowing the process to result in a nicely tapered round barrel, with a well controlled bore diameter and a concentric bore.  Again, without the seam weld.

Jim

[doug]

Somewhere I recall seeing illustrations of the rollers apparently used in forming barrels (which country I forget)  Think in terms of two,(one above the other) iron/steel rollers 3 or more feet in diameter and several feet long.  Vaguely resembling two oil drums laying side by side, one over the other and their long axis parallel with the floor.

    These rollers had a series of radial grooves in them and I am sure the billet was heated red hot and then fed into the first and widest groove and as the diameter reduced fed into progressively smaller grooves.  As long as there was some sort of clutch on the rollers, to permit starting the billet at a specific location and as long as the grooves were tapered in width and depth, a barrel maker could roll most any shape they wanted although obviously one pair or rollers would only roll one shape.

cheers Doug

[JCKelly]

Steel barrels were stronger than wrought iron. They began to be used for Allen pistols & pepperboxes in 1837, while Remington and others also made their barrels of "cast steel". Ned Roberts says that barrels drilled from solid shot better than those rolled from bar which had the starting hole put in by the steel mill.  Some guns, notably Deringer pistols and Sharps cartridge rifles, continued to use wrought iron. Springfield .58 musket barrels were a good grade of wrought iron, made by roll-welding the cylinder from iron skelp. They were quite strong. This roll-weld process was used to make black iron pipe well into the 20th century.

The steel making process is rather long & tedious to describe. One thing, though, something marked "cast steel" is NOT a casting. It was hot forged from a cast steel ingot. In the 20th century we called it "crucible steel" and it was a very high grade product used for tool steels a couple of generations ago.

When you pour that molten steel into an ingot carbon monoxide gas is given off, leaving the ingot full of holes. To get the thing solid you had to hot forge or hot roll it to close up the blowholes. In modern steel production the mill "kills" the molten steel by adding a touch or aluminum and/or silicon to react with the oxygen. In 1850 this process hadn't been developed for large ingots (like, for cannon). Whitworth solved this with his "fluid compressed steel". He poured the ingot, then while it was still molten he heavily compressed it so the bubbles did not form. Worked well. I did metallography on a sample given me by the late Bill Roberts. It looked about like a modern 1035 steel, annealed.

This fluid-compression process worked so well that in the late 1960's the melting research guys at Allegheny Ludlum were murmuring about this wonderful new process the Russians had to make sound ingots in high nickel super-alloys. Those Russians had the ingot to solidify whilst under compression. Those researchers did not look happy  when I came in next day with an 1873 edition of Whitworth on Guns and Steel  by Sir Joseph Whitworth. Humorless group.

[hudson]

As I recall on Remington barrels a hole was punched in a heated billet then a rod or mandrel was inserted. This was passed back and forth through rollers having groves decreasing in size. Also as I recall there was a way to eject the mandrel.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

This is information on barrel rolling tooling.  This shows the rollers that resulted in a tapered round barrel with a bore that was accurately controlled in concentricity and diameter.  Patent number 27,539, 1860.  Either in steel or in iron material.  Figure 4 shows the starting short heavy barrel blank, figure 5 shows the barrel as finished rolled.

[tim crowe]

James , Just curious have you welded a barrel from steel as opposed to Wrought Iron? If so how did it weld?

[James Wilson Everett]

Tim,

I have forge welded barrels from wrought iron and found it technically easy but physically demanding (an understatement).  I have tried to forge weld mild steel and high carbon steel and found it very difficult (another understatement).  What I do now is to buy old original wrought iron barrels and ream & rifle, ream to smoothbore, or ream and install a liner.  Check out the topic "wrought iron barrel reuse".  Also, I have taken the very heavy WI barrels and forged them to a longer length.  A lazy guy's way to get a real WI barrel.

Jim

[tim crowe]

Jim,
I was curious about WI vs Steel in your experience.  I have found WI forges easier and "Flows" better , easier into welding. Steel is a harder working and welding is just a bitter hill with hitting welding heats. I appreciate your sharing your "hard won " experience , it gives others incentive that the technology can be reproduced if folks do due diligence.
Not all wagon rims are WI , some are steel , some are a mix!?
Tim

[Steve Bookout]

Well, guys, I gotta butt in here and my two cents.  Not from what I've heard about, read about, but what I have personally experienced. I have welded up some 100+ barrels these past 40 some years.  I have often found hand welded barrels of wrought and steel both to have welds visible and the barrels have been dressed out very nicely and all around the barrel, not just on top.  In fact, there are three of them in my shop at this very moment.  Some of my own barrels that I forged years ago have started showing the weld seams.  In all these cases, the barrels have taken on an age patina and the seams turn a darker brown than say the middle of the skelp.   To return to your original question,  yes, you can usually discern the difference between a wrought barrel and most steel barrels.  The grain is usually the giveaway for a wrought barrel, but a pitty surface on a wrought can look like a low grade steel barrel that has many impurities in it.  (Guess you could say it's the pits)!  Heavy rust from an old, no longer used barrel can indicate steel as well.  Shaving with a pocket knife is not always a good method to tell the difference. Nor is striking a hanging barrel with a small hammer to hear the tone of the ring.  Not all wrought, and certainly not all steels are created equally, so the ringing tones vary(...and i'm as deaf as door knob, too!)  Photo is a section of one of the barrels here in the shop that displays the seam.
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