| I wonder, mostly, what was the technique for making barrels? Even an accurate tube is pretty difficult to make without a good lathe and cutting tools. I know that some were straps that were wrapped helically around a mandrel and hammer welded into a tube. Still, the early rifling cutting method is not clear. Someone wrote an article about a gunmaker whittling a helical guide from a log and using the wood pattern for pulling a rod or wood dowel with a piece of file on the end while shimming the cutter for each pass. I don't remember where I read this but it sounds pretty strange to me.
__________________  “War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.” —John Stuart Mill |