Dustin;
You are straight on about the striking and profiling. That is the dividing line between the talker barrel sleevers and the real barrel makers. Some sleeving jobs from the talkers are like swinging a hoe handle. Also the striking and profiling needs to be done prior to the TiG welding of the barrels, or as you can see in the gunsmith of this video before he soldered the barrels. I suspect he is Liege trained as you can see how well he keeps his shop and equipment and he will have a good future and get better each day. A great portion of the invisible soft soldering is the profiling mostly complete first so that you can do the final fitting machine work on the barrel and the monoblock fitting surface--if this is not a near zero fit you cannot have an invisible job. Some time in the future maybe we can talk and I can describe two methods to make the line invisible.
The machining of the barrel stubs through the breech end of the monobloc can be done several ways one way being with a vertical milling machine that has a built for purpose table side extension jig. One way that I have done it is to make a built for purpose cutter that fits into a pilot busing in the breech end of the barrels. That cutter method can be done on the vertical mill or on a lathe that you have built a jig that attaches to the lathe carriage--similar to a lathe milling machine attachment and you run the lathe headstock very slowly.
I am surprised to learn that even with 20 blacking cycles someone could hide a sleeving line.
Nick Mackinson had a good reputation and just this last Sunday John Boyd and I were talking about him. Back in 2002 Benj Wild let me come into their shop in Price street and into the room where they were blacking barrels.
Small TiG units are so inexpensive now that a gunmaker/gunsmith easily do work that he could never do before and it does not take long to learn--and are a must for the barrel sleever.
However bottom line is a excellent barrel sleeving job with blacking of the barrels new ribs and so forth is going to cost $3,500.00 plus and the only place you can get the tubes is maybe Italy---I suspect the Turks will begin to make tubes available. The Turks use a lot of 4140 alloy steel tubes which do not black to a glossy finish as so many of us like though.
I think I have some old photos of the lathe jig and the vertical milling machine table unit and if I can find them I will send them to you.
Last edited by bushveld; 03/19/24 06:48 PM.
