barrel bedding

[thecapgunkid]

Did the 18th century gunsmith and how?

Say, a transition from a straight to a tapered or swamped?

 

[LRB]

There were no straight parallel sided barrels until the 19th c. Or at any rate, it would a very rare find. Tapered, yes, swamped so little that you have to look close to tell, but straight sided barrels didn't really happen until machine made blanks were offered sometime in the first half of the 19th c., which made hand forged barrels pretty much obsolete.

 

[Birddog6]

If you mean a bedding like today, no, never saw or heard of a OLD barrel being bedded with any type of compound.

I have seen some old ones so carefully inletted it was amazing how tight & close it was, almost perfect, yet you
could see it was cut by hand.

But what is the most amazing to me is how sloppily some of the barrels were inlet. I have seen allot of
them with a round cut barrel inlet & a octagon barrel sitting it it & just the corners of the octagon touching....
Big gaps everywhere & been that way for 200 years ! :shocked2: the only that close to fitting was the breech end & the
nosecap. :idunno:

Yet I and allot of others are worried about a lil tiny gap here & there & are gluing in a shim here & there cause
that just doesn't look good, etc. :shake: then I think to myself "The dang barrel is sittin over it, ya hammerhead !
:slap: and besides that, nobody cares ! :redface: :rotf: :rotf:

Keith Lisle

 

[galamb]

Yes, Keith nailed it.

The "idea" that a barrel must fit the stock like a glove, I would suggest, is a "modern thing" brought about by our "mass produced, cnc machined, thinking".

I bed all my black powder rifles to help preserve and strengthen the forestock wood and more specifically, the thin web between the barrel and ramrod channel.

I don't know or care if it does or doesn't make any accuracy difference.

(as a side note, I absolutely do "not" bed any of my modern CF rifles - for me it's not about "accuracy")

 

[ohio ramrod]

I have seen some origionals that had bees wax filling gaps in the inletting. I can't say if it was used as a bedding compound or just to seal the wood. :idunno:

 

[bpd303]

My Grandfather's original .36 caliber Ohio flintlock had what looked like some type of fabric embedded in hoof hot glue as a bedding material. I don't think it was any type of repair.

 

[Artificer]

Your Grandfather's rifle with the cloth and glue is extremely interesting to me.

Linen and glue was used to make Alexander the Great's and other Macedonian Linothorax Body Armor, which some people are attempting to re-create today. Here is just one example. https://www.uwgb.edu/aldreteg/Linothorax.html

The cloth and glue could have been both for strengthening/repairing the fore arm as well as bedding it.

In more modern context, fiberglass cloth and glue are used to strengthen and/or repair a number of items in the modern world.

Gus

 

[rich pierce]

Did the 18th century gunsmith and how?

Say, a transition from a straight to a tapered or swamped?

I'm interested in the the original question. Are you askin what would be done when putting in a new barrel of different profile in an old gun stock? Or do you have the idea that gunsmiths started with pre-carved stocks that had the barrel channel cut?

Each barrel was hand inlet by removing wood. No power tools or machines that cut straight channels were used. So each inlet fit the barrel, reasonably, wood to iron. No filler was needed or used. When's using these methods it really is a matter of hand fitting and it doesn't matter much if the barrel is straight sided or tapered or swamped. It's about the same work each way.

 

[LaBonte]

Well known and regarded maker of rifles, Jack Brooks has studied the subject in depth and offers some views/advice on barrel bedding as the originals were.
a quote from the following link

I have had the opportunity to remove the barrels from the 18th century rifle stocks, all have had a round bottom inlet for the octagon barrel. Generally, the bottom corners of the octagon are in contact with the wood, but the stockers did not seem to worry about full contact with the barrel flats. Some of these rifles that I’m referring to were made by men named J.P. Beck, Nicolas Beyer, and J. Bonewitz. We would do well to make rifles as well as these old masters.

http://www.jsbrookslongrifles.com/theclassroom.htm
Just scroll down for the article on bedding.

 

[thecapgunkid]

Rich is pretty close to my original question, although a lot of info has been thrown around.

A guy walks into a gunshop with a straight octo barrel that is, let's say, worn a little. He dickers with the gunmaker to put in a new , swamped barrel. What did the gunmaker do? Did he bed the barrel? How?

For those of you who cannot resist the sarcasm....A guy walks into a gunshop with a parrot on his shoulder. The Gunmaker points and begins to ask his question about the bird when the bird pipes up...Can you get this guy off my feet?

 

[galamb]

I would say you are thinking more "modern" where the stock is often worth more than the barrel.

Back when it was the stock that was the "cheap part" of the rifle.

Here is a list of items from a gunbuilders estate in 1833 (Ortho Sheets, a somewhat famous Shenandoah builder).

Note that a barrel is worth 3 bucks, yet 19 gunstocks "combined" are only worth $2.37 (or 12 1/2 cents each - less than half the "value" of a flint.

Now, you can assume these might be "blanks", but by today's rate, if a barrel costs say $250 (a Rice gunmakers barrel) then if the "blank" kept the same ratio you could pick up a decent stock blank for $10.42.

Somewhere between the 1830's and today, while a barrel only went up 83X the cost of a blank, even a "plain one" has gone up 1250X the 1830's "sticker price".

There is also a whole series of journals that were kept by the Vincent's (both father and son) and they indicate that for every gun they ever built they "restocked" between 3 and 5.

Barrels were re-used, but they were put in a "new stock" - the stocks were the "throw away" item of the day. Trees grew everywhere, barrels, locks and triggers not so much.

 

[rich pierce]

In general swamped barrels preceded straight barrels and a customer toting a new barrel into a gun shop would be unusual. But, Galamb hit it. We see a lot of restocked originals.

Re-cutting the rifling of the worn barrel would be the most economical fix.

I am guessing the question arose because today's shooters often have a gun with a straight sided barrel and are told a swamped barrel will balance better. But taking today's thinking or scenarios to the past is a sort of back to the future exercise.

 

[M. De Land]

Be that as it may I will never purposely leave any gaps in a bedding job if it can be helped modern or muzzle loader.
Close inletting is practical to help keep out water and debris as well as strengthening and giving better appearance to any gun stock.

 

[George]

Be that as it may I will never purposely leave any gaps in a bedding job if it can be helped modern or muzzle loader.
Close inletting is practical to help keep out water and debris as well as strengthening and giving better appearance to any gun stock.

I have an original with a 49" swamped barrel, and the stock to barrel fit is excellent, no gaps at all. Take the barrel out of the stock, though, and it's not the same. The stock is not cut to fit the flats of the barrel on the bottom, only on the sides, and the channel in the stock is round-bottom, not faceted.

The old boys did a lot of things I find strange. I have a pistol with an octagon to round barrel and an elaborate wedding band. The flats of the octagon section are only filed on the visible part of the barrel, as is the wedding band. The bottom of that section is round, as is the entire inlet in the stock.

Spence

 

[LaBonte]

Not at all strange - in fact not uncommon on many originals I examined. Only on the high end pieces of the period do you find superfine/full inletting and metal work that shows on all surfaces.