cutting off and crowning a barrel tutorial??

[Bigmon]

Anyone know if there is anything shown on here about how to shorten a barrel on here??
And crown it??
I know some advise cutting the breach end but I have n way of boring or taping for the plug.
But I do have a hack saw and files.
More interested in how to get it square and then do the croen inside and out?
Thanks

[Tim Crosby]

 This may help:

 http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=4375.msg40866#msg40866

  Tim C.

[Ky-Flinter]

This may help:

 http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=4375.msg40866#msg40866

  Tim C.

The use of the Coning tool in the above link requires starting with a squared and crowned muzzle.

If I'm not mistaken, Bigmon is asking how to shorten a barrel with a hacksaw and files and how to keep the cut off end square.  I did a search on the words “cutting barrel off hacksaw” and turned up these blasts from the past.

http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=38473.0

http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=10690


-Ron

[Tim Crosby]

 Yes, Much better. TC

[Hungry Horse]

The first muzzleloader I built with a custom barrel had to be shortened because it was just too barrel heavy. I took it to a machinist who turned off the needed amount of barrel and crowned it. It definitely wasn't cheap. Years later I had a gun that got the muzzle damaged and needed a little shortening and a recrowning. I took to a local gun bug that before I could stop him, cut the barrel off with an abrasive cutoff saw, and re crowned it with a round ball stone in an air drill. He saw the look on my face and said, shoot it before you get your panties in a twist. I did, and it shot as good as the one done by a machinist. And, I have done my own ever since. I do also give them a once over lightly with my thumb and some Emory paper as Daryl has showed us many times. Works for me.

  Hungry Horse

[smokinbuck]

Bigmon has asked a question which, unless I am mistaken, hasn't been answered. He is being shown how to cut a "straight" barrel but has asked how to cut a "tapered" barrel. The coning and crowning are all good methods but to get the muzzle square is the first trick. I'm not a gunsmith or machinist so I'm not offering up an answer, just trying to clarify what I think was asked.
Mark

[Hungry Horse]

Mark, unless I am totally missing it, he doesn't say a thing about a tapered barrel.

  Hungry Horse

[Bigmon]

Very many thanks to ALL!!
I am sure I can get this done with all this help, I think??

BTW, it is just a straight 13 / 16" GM barrel.
Gonna be a gun for my Grandsons (3) to learn on as they get a little bigger.
The barrel I have is 42" lg and I wanna cut it to about 38" or 40".
Where I got the barrel they didnt have a 36" barrel, which would have been ok I guess.
But it is a slender Lehigh type stock and I wanna keep it as long as I can, so long as they can handle it.

Thanks to all

[smokinbuck]

HH,
Sorry about that. For some reason I thought I read it as "straight tapered". My apologies.
Mark

[thecapgunkid]

I guess there is some truth to the statement that ignorance is bliss.  Not being a professional maker, I took a shelf bracket made of metal and ground down the little bulge inside the crotch of it.  I used one of the big thick bad boys that are about four or five inches long on each side.

I shoved a patched ball  down about a half  inch further than my cut line.

Now I'm working up a sweat and shaking like a leaf, so I whipped out the rosary,  stopped and did some coffee and beads.

I clamped the thing in my Rice Barrels breech wrench blocks in my vice, levelled the barrel in said arrangement, applied the squared shelf bracket with a common C clamp at the mark I wanted to cut on.  I checked to make sure the elbow of the shelf bracket was squarely on the top flat as the barrel lay in the vice, and hack sawed it with a new, fresh blade and a lot of oil.

That didn't seem so bad, so I opened my eyes.  Kinda like I used to do when I was a kid at second base finding a short hop in the glove...

Then I took a round stone  ( because I am too incompetent to hold a coned stone straight) and crowned the muzzle, eyeball even.  Then I chickened out on the eyeball part and engaged my T square.

Shoved the ball out the muzzle taking the  bits of metal with it, swabbed the barrel and fitted it to my rifle.  Vwa  Lah

Once breeched and pinned and bolted in, I went  down to the range trying to think of what to write here in this forum under the thread title of... "OMG, another moron mistake please help"...

I got Ol' Billy Bones on the bench, and shot a one inch group on the red dot at 25 yards and a three inch group on the red dot at 50 yards.

Either I found a simple tool that works, or I backed into it by accident, or St. Joseph The Worker intervened out of pity, but I will do this again with the exception of using  the shelf bracket only once each time.

OK...so, now...all you pro's... take your best shot.

Good Night for now and may God Bless...

The Capgun Kid

[rich pierce]

I like that you put the patched ball in there to push out the chips.  Thinking ahead!

[Dphariss]

Anyone know if there is anything shown on here about how to shorten a barrel on here??
And crown it??
I know some advise cutting the breach end but I have n way of boring or taping for the plug.
But I do have a hack saw and files.
More interested in how to get it square and then do the croen inside and out?
Thanks

In a BP arm the crown is inside. Swamped barrels are harder to square and in new construction shortening from the breech is the best option with any barrel.

I think there are explanations in the archives on this. I use my lathe. But crowning can be done with a counter sink if thats all you have so long as its polished after. Nor do they have to be extreme.
This is plenty and probably better than going deeper.


This is a 2 angle crown on a hunting rifle.


I can "recrown" by hand too and have on guns that have been damaged in use and before I had a lathe. The tools used determined by the amount of work to be done.
Straignt barrels can be squared with a file and a good 90 degree square. If cut with a hacksaw mark each flat on an oct barrel and cut the flats one at a time to reduce the saw running out an making a lot more work with the file.

Dan

[Dphariss]

For those that want to use one of those funneling tools I suggest you get a copy of Baird's "Hawken Rifles; The Mountain Man's Choice. One chapter describes the what the bore was done at the muzzle and also how it was choked.
I consider the funneling to be unnecessary unless very slight and for very deep. I think its a good way to make a great shooting barrel into a "pretty good" shoot barrel if used to excess.
Dan

[Longknife]

Dan, the key word her are "if used to excess". The belief that a traditional cone is long, sometimes as long as much as two inches long is simply not true. In the many original m-l barrels that I have examined the cone is rarely over 1/2 inch long. I have never found an original m-l barrel to be crowned as is done today. The coning that my tool does very much resembles the depth of your "two angle crown"., except with out the change in the angle, and you don't need a lathe.

[Longknife]

This may help:

 http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=4375.msg40866#msg40866

  Tim C.

The use of the Coning tool in the above link requires starting with a squared and crowned muzzle.

If I'm not mistaken, Bigmon is asking how to shorten a barrel with a hacksaw and files and how to keep the cut off end square.  I did a search on the words “cutting barrel off hacksaw” and turned up these blasts from the past.

http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=38473.0

http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=10690


-Ron

Ron, The reason to start with a squared and crowned muzzle is to be able to start the patch and jag. It MUST fit fairly tight. It is possible to lightly crown a new cut off and squared barrel with a stone, or your finger and emery as long as you can start the patch jag combo,  it needs to fit  TIGHT!!! 

[Scota4570]

Dphariss, what type of lathe tool are you using?  A boring bar type of thing?  You are going in and out with the compound rest feed?  It looks like two different angles, what are the angles. 

I use a sickle shape tool to create a crown of increasing radius, like a scroll shape.  Any comment on that?

[Daryl]

Nicely smoothed crowns on Dan's rifles. Mine more closely resemble the top one, some with a bit more smoothing, but not much.

[Dphariss]

Dphariss, what type of lathe tool are you using?  A boring bar type of thing?  You are going in and out with the compound rest feed?  It looks like two different angles, what are the angles. 

I use a sickle shape tool to create a crown of increasing radius, like a scroll shape.  Any comment on that?

I cut both with the same tool. Just a lathe tool that will go in the muzzle will work. Usually needs a relief ground on it.  How I use it depends in how it fits the bore which tool I find first...  The tool or tools is not as important as the set up.
Cut the first angle to my usual crown then did a longer angle to relieve it a little more.
I use a plug gage and dial indicator to center it perfectly and a cats head on the other end so the whole bore is true with the rotation.
I used to use a contoured cutter on SA colt barrels so they have the right radius.
Might have used a cutter for making bullet swage nose punches on this. Don't remember.

Dan

[Dphariss]

Dan, the key word her are "if used to excess". The belief that a traditional cone is long, sometimes as long as much as two inches long is simply not true. In the many original m-l barrels that I have examined the cone is rarely over 1/2 inch long. I have never found an original m-l barrel to be crowned as is done today. The coning that my tool does very much resembles the depth of your "two angle crown"., except with out the change in the angle, and you don't need a lathe.

I just found the typo. Should be "NOT very deep".
The coning described in Baird's book, surely checked by TK Dawson, is not very deep, but definitely coned.  The choke restriction in that barrel starts 9.5" from the muzzle and then about 2" from the muzzle its opens about .0005" and then 1/4" from the muzzle it goes out an additional .002" according to page 42.
I would never  do anything but a crown as seen on the pistol barrel above on a competition rifle.
I don't think that they loaded very tight back in the day either. At least not the usual type of shooter. The very wide lands found in some old barrel precluded a tight fit. I shoot .498-.500" with a pretty significant linen patch in a GM 50 cal. .010-.012" or so.
There have always been shooters and riflemen and shooters are not as particular. Baird reports pretty good accuracy with the rifle. But the 200 yard testing makes me wonder. With any breeze at 200 wind dispersion is incredible in any breeze the shooter can feel. Yeah I have shot 200 with a 54 caliber rifle. With no wind they are surprisingly accurate to 200. With a wind?  A puff will blow the ball off the paper at 200. I did all my 200 yard tests, years ago, as soon as it was light on calm days. I would get a few shots before the air started moving. Then it was pack up and leave. Pointless. At 300 hundred a 50 cal ball and a light breeze moves several FEET.
Dan

[Daryl]

Here's a nice crown Taylor put on the muzzle of a Hawken he built - probably used his lathe, but this is easily done by hand, as well.
It is probably not quite 1/8" deep.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

Here is a photo of an 18th c style barrel crown tool.  Very similar to a very large cherry.  Since it is a sphere, alignment is not too important, you use this with a hand brace.  I works very well and you don't get into such trouble as you often do with power tools.



Jim

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

Here are two photos of an original barrel crowning tool.  I have not used this one to crown a barrel, it looks like it would do a rather poor job.  I have used it to cut the flashpan hollow on one of my gunlocks.

Jim

[flehto]

To get the muzzle square and flat I just clamp a hardened "V" block on a straight bbl and use shims to compensate w/ a swamped bbl.  A file slides across the  "V" block surface until it no longer cuts and then a stone is used w/ the "V" block removed.. I made these "V" blocks when an apprentice and they're ultra accurate.

For the chamfer a ball bearing w/  parallel flats ground on is used w/ valve grinding compound and rotated w/ Visegrips.   Takes a little time but does the job.. Cutting off and chamfering a bbl isn't something that's done very often...anyways w/ me......Fred