doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Forming Oxygen cylinders

A 5 minute video on the making of oxygen cylinders.
It's a metal forming video primarily.

I didn't want to clutter up the 686 thread any further.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM1nNqqMAfs

I've worked with metal all of my life and have never seen that process. Very cool.

Taken from another thread. This is a metaphor 'to help people imagine forming barrel blanks from cross cut chunks of bar stock'?

yes.
Think of a slug of stock cut to a short length.
A hole is drilled through it centrally.
Heated, a ram pushes it down through dies.
They start out small, and are drawn to length, stretching the grain structure longitudinally.
This is modern tube making for monoblocking.
In the cylinder video, imagine placing black dots on the slug, and then where they end up at, and what they look like when the cylinder is finished.

There are manufacturers that use "deep hole drilling" and some that actually hog barrels sets out of solid in their entirety.

Here's a Sabatti barrel making video, it's in Italian, but you can see bar stock, blanks, initial boring, and drawing of the slug into a barrel tube. Stretching those metal grains all in one direction for firearms use. Other use different drawing techniques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttSSUYjpCg

That was an interesting video, and the process is a bit similar to the cold impact extrusion that is used to form aluminum fire extinguishers, aerosol cans, and pop and beer cans. That process, however, forms a can in one punch from an extrusion press that runs up to a couple hundred strokes per minute. An aluminum slug about the size of a silver dollar is punched into a can 9 or 10 inches long in a mere blink of your eye. Bottom forming is very similar, but forming the shoulder or neck is done in a series of dies after the label is printed on the can. The printing on the shoulder area is actually misshapen at first and becomes normal after it is roll formed. It's fascinating to see the first time. After you see it happen 20 million times in a month, the fascination quickly wears off.

The Italians and Germans were using a process similar to this gas cylinder forming process in the late 1800's to pierce a short red hot billet to produce seamless steel pipe and tubing. Those pierced shells were further reduced in diameter, and much elongated, by running them through a rolling mill with a graphite coated mandrel bar which set the inside diameter. Much of this development was driven by the demands of the Arms Industry for producing cannon and rifle barrels.

Mostly courtesy of Steve Helsley

William Deakin and John Bagnall Johnson - British patent 647 of March 3rd, 1866. Patent Punched Steel Tube Company - Albion Works - West Bromwich.

"Metallurgy of Steel", 1905
http://books.google.com/books?id=RaF9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA512&lpg
As early as 1866, Messrs Deakin & Johnson, of Bilston, were making weldless rifle barrels from a steel block about 1 inches diameter and 8 inches long, by punching a hole from each end under a steam hammer, and then rolling the blank presumably in the same way as weldless tubes are now rolled in the process of "rolling off".

I could only scan the video quickly, but I thought I saw full length round bar stock that was deep hole drilled and then button rifled. If drawing was done to lengthen the tube, was it to improve the barrel or manufacturing 'good enough'?

I suspect, if the round bar stock arrived drawn out in length, and it was used in that configuration, as opposed to cross cutting a 'plate' off, there was already some 'grain' alignment. A bit like the other penny example, or your dot thought, I'd think it would mitigate the defect of the 'dot' if it were imagined to be an inclusion, by diluting and distributing. If an inclusion started off as a random blob, wouldn't it take on the characteristics of an elongated 'seam' even if a seam wasn't intentionally used to create the tube?

My question would be, since there is an intentional lengthwise direction being created for 'firearms use', is this the best way to create a 'hoop'. There may be some thought that 'hoop strength' may be an attribute that resists forces that are ninety degrees to the length of the barrel.

On a side thought. If these 'dots' or defects present too much of an unknown. I wonder if the 'dots' could be 'stretched' or maybe drawn thin and elongated. Then, maybe a bunch of the questionable bars were twisted so that no single defect could present through and through. Then, this composed elongated bar were turned near ninety degrees to the long axis and wrapped as a tube. Only remaining thing needed would be cheap skilled forge welding skills and maybe a barrel could come out the other end.

If modern steel is so questionable, it's no wonder some thought had to be put into turning horse shoe nails into a gun barrel component. Then again, maybe modern steel doesn't have to be best quality to be 'good enough'. Just thoughts is all, CZ.

I've had the luxury of being around manufacturing for many years. All the way from minng operations, through Taconite facilities, to steel mill, Coke Batteries, rolling mils, stamping plants, roto forging facilities, hammer forging facilities, tool shops, job shops, modeling facilities, inspection houses, QC, all the way through paint and general assembly.

When I say "good enough", it's between the acceptable low, and the acceptable high specification.

When is a barrel too thin? When is it too thick? In between is good enough. There may be other parameters, but, essentially, every parameter has a set of brackets.

Multi layered damascus barrels undoubtedly (in my mind anyway) benefited from layering. Same with the twisting of the ribbands bringing benefits