Goo,
It the fires of Toad Hall we confirm the welds when welding the barrel several times , its not a one and done, after the barrel is complete, we proof test the barrel, several times. There are things to look for when one is welding the tubes that show the metal is becoming one solid union and not a unwelded seam, only learned by experience. Good wrought iron is a dream to weld , a good barrel smith can weld poorer quality WI but its work. Angus, Ken Guy, Dan Thompson , JB Bauer and others that have been to Bookie's Barrel welding classes can attest to this.
Tim
P.S. no offense taken with questions about wrought iron or its suitability for barrel welding, or how to weld it up.
Thank you for not being offended. As I understand your reply the barrel manufacturing process involves involves proofing and testing to reveal flaws and pushing the product to point of failure which reasonably allows us to use the barrel (this is the caveat) At the time of manufacture it passed testing.
I assume reconditioning old barrels follow the same rules which leads to the follow up question which may be obvious to those who work with forge welded skelp into tubes. why not do this with low carbon 1018 steel? which has very similar properties to wrought iron minus the wood grain effect.
My previous comment also questioned, Why is the new technology of joining modern flawless material into heavy wall tubing in a controlled environment to produce a joined seam that is undetectable and passing proofing test not acceptable? While an old technology to produce the same thing under with the chances of contamination being much higher passing proofing test acceptable ?
I and perhaps others don’t know how to navigate and distinguish between different methods and qualities of DOM tubing. There has been criticism of DOM tubing that may be based on one type or another, and the non-engineer, non-metallurgist doesn’t know what’s what snd lumps them all together as suspect. Though some high quality builders use barrels fashioned from DOM barrels. I have such a barrel on my rack, from Ken Netting.
The barrel safety topic has many confusing facets.
1. The traditional method of making barrels, used exclusively for many hundreds of years (forge welding) is considered suspect by some. Yet many of us shoot original ML rifles and shotguns with forged wrought iron barrels.
2. Some people throw around the term “barrel steel” meaning steel intended for high pressure modern cartridge guns and state that most ML barrels are not made of “barrel steel”. True but in my view, not entirely relevant to low pressure guns shooting black powder.
There are more factors, including some failure of ML barrels in the 1970s and 1980s, primarily made by deep drilling of drawn octagon barrels by Douglas. Before, during, and since that period tens of thousands of “non-barrel steel” barrels by many famous makers have been used without incident. Failures have occurred, just as they have with cartridge guns with barrels of 4140, etc. All it takes is operator error.
What few people who call for “barrel steel” barrels in muzzleloaders or warn against all forms of DOM tubing address are these 2 questions:
A) What is the margin between pressure created in a muzzleloader loaded with black powder and the failure pressure of the barrel material being used?
B) What is the margin between pressure created in a center fire rifle and the failure pressure of the barrel material being used?
It’s all been addressed before, several times a year. But, you can see that it’s confusing to many. Most of us purchase available barrels from established makers and choose to not over-think it.
