making gun barrels in the lathe

[homebrew .357]

Hi Guys, new member here from down in New Zealand, I`m a retired aircarft worker and main trade was Electroplating, Hard Crome extra. Have had a myford 7 lathe in my work shop for 10 plus years, plus a drill press, and grinder. I have upgraded my lathe to a second hand taiwaines one, 900mm b/centers and 38mm spindle bore.
As I also like going deer hunting ,guns are my pet sudject. What am i working on know is a Hawkins plains rifle in .440"cal and trying to make the barrel on the lathe, yep no such word as CARN`T. Homebrew .357
I got this idea from Bill Webbs rifle barrel making machine , as I have his dvd and info.
But the stand alone barrel machine would cost a bit to make, so I though with a few atachments to the new lathe it could be done on it .
Allso sent for Danjons catalog on gun drills to see what they looket like as I am making them to, but I may have a problem here, more on that soon.
As the barrel is only for blackpower, I have some (aisi 1045 steel) a bit down from 4140 or is there better types, 1137 ,easier maching , Doug

[Al_Messer]

Good on yer, Mate!! Good luck with the project and please keep us posted with some photos if you can.

Al

[homebrew .357]

Thanks Al.
Trying to sort out what steel for blackpowder barrels, i have aisi 1045 ,could be a bit hard to cut as it is close to 4140. Bill Webb mentions 1140 as easy to cut but no good for highpower rifle barrels, is it ok for blackpowder?.
Green Mountain rifle barrels use aisi1137. so any help, any barrel I make will be proof tested!, Thanks Guys, remeber while theres bullets in the air thers hope.

[alphawolf45]

. if youre able to drill ,ream and rifle a barrel on a conventional lathe then I really want to see that..That would be amazing... I hope you succeed and take a lot of pictures...

If I couldnt buy a barrel and really wanted a muzzle loader , I would build a smooth bore ....There are lots of folks like to hunt with smooth bores....Makes a versatile weapon as it can be loaded with either ball or shot, Can use same gun to hunt anything from dove to deer....

[homebrew .357]

It`s no fun doing it the easy way, But first have to drill the hole, I`m making the gundrill , 4140 tube steel, turned down to size, drill tip, D2 steel hardend and T/C tip brazed on, ground to size and shape. this tip screws into the tube plus oil hole. Buying a high pressure oil pump over here is big $$$$, but thinking outside the square I bougth a car power steering pump, $40, these little suckers put out ,1,200psi and cutting oil no problem .
Will try to send some pics, if I try here I lose it all.

[Wayne Shaw]

I would be interested in the progress as well. There was a barrel maker, who made very good benchrest grade barrels by the way, that used modified lathes.

If you think about it, most that have a lathe with a big enough spindle hole chamber through the headstock. So, why not mount a piece of steel the same way, and you can use the carriage to do the feeding. I would think drilling the hole would be the biggest hurdle. They do use pressurized drills on the gun drills, but I would think that could be done. Once drilled, pulling a reamer should be easy. To do a cut rifled barrel, making the cutter "box" could be a project of itself, but the actual cutter has the twist pitch ground into it, so a means of pulling the cutter with a bearing would be needed, and this too would not be hard.

I'm not sure how much pressure is needed to pull a button, I think in the 1500# range, and I don't know if a normal lathe carriage would pull that much. So a cutter would be easier, although very time consuming.

[Al_Messer]

"Google" ought to have a lot of sources of info for making your own barrel and equiptment for making them.

[homebrew .357]

In the US OF A you can get anything you want, not so in N Z, anyway still trying to sort out some pic`s of what I`m doing. Lets see if this goes with a bang. PS,hey I got it guys, take pics strait from the camra, but the batterys went flat,so more to come, .357.

tool post grinder set up, yep , thats my electric drill for drive.

[GeorgeGaskill]

The problem with gundrilling in a conventional lathe is you can't get the feed slow enough or the RPM high enough. Most gundrilling is done with a feed rate of a few tenths (.0001") per revolution so the chips are small enough that the oil can carry them out of the hole. Most lathes won't go below .002" without modification.

[homebrew .357]

Yes George you are right, I got this imfo on speeds and feeds from, (www Bill Webbs Rifle Barrel Making Machine), and from Danjons. So with this in mind I set out to down gear my lathe drive. My lathe is a belt drive and cuts metric and inch threads with a change of some gears in a cover at the end of the head stock. A 30 tooth drives a large 127tooth gear, this gear has four holes for lightness, so useing two, I attached a small vbelt pulley, 50mm, it drives a .300mm pulley attached to the gearbox drive which is set at finest feed.
You won`t belive it , but I get five turns of the head stock for 0.01mm checked with D T I. The maximum speed I can get is 1.200 rev`s , mite work as I`m drilling a .416" hole , have to suck and see or gear it up. Homebrew.357.

[GeorgeGaskill]

Although I am no authority on drilling barrels, I think the 6000 RPM is mostly for accelerating the process. 1200 RPM would probably work, just take five times as long. .002 mm X 1200 RPM = 3.6 mm per minute. 30" barrel X 25.4 mm/in /3.6 mm/min = 211 2/3 minutes, and that is if the first one comes out OK.

Good luck.

[homebrew .357]

Hi George, danjons info says 4.000 rev`s and Bill Webb says 2.600, but as you say give it a try, look I`m retired, plenty of time to play around.
The three gearboxes consist of, from the left, 1 to 28 box is from rex engineering, Titusvill, FL, a cominhandy bit my son gave me, gearbox two is from a skilsaw, and three is from a angle grinder for a 90/ 0 angle to drive from the side. And if all this wont work I still have my marlin lever .3030 to go deer hunting. cheers .357.