Steve would be able to make a more educated guess than any one I know.
Thanks for your vote of confidence, Pete.
Before I would be willing to throw out an estimate of time required to make a barrel, I would want to put a pencil to some calculations. I would be amazed to find that the barrel makers could produce 4 barrels in a day. Off the cuff, I think two barrels a day would be a challenge.
One thing that must be considered, is the time required to bring the material to heat in the forge. Nothing happens on the anvil until the steel is at the proper forging temperature. A lot of shop time is used up, just waiting for the metal to come to heat. I can use the movie of the old barrel welders to do some estimates on the number of forging cycles required. Then, use my knowledge of how long it might take to heat a given section of metal to forging temperature. Adding heating time to time on the anvil for each forging cycle should give some reasonable estimates.
I've seen some figures published on the number of barrel smiths in a given area, plus the number of barrels produced in a year's time. If these figures can be trusted, it might be possible to back into the time required to make a barrel, by calculating the number of man hours available in that year and dividing by the number of barrels produced. This might be used to verify any calculations that I come up with.
Not that is has any relevance to what experienced barrel makers could do; but, I spent six hours at the forge making the small barrel that I produced. I should be considered to be inexperienced, working by myself, using different tools and entirely different forges than the old barrel makers. I was being very slow and methodical with my work. I'm sure an experienced workman could accomplish the same in a lesser amount of time. I also believe that the iron and steel materials used back then were much easier to work with.
I'll work on some calculations and post the results here. Probably will take several days, at least.
