doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com images rifle barrel "wedding band"

I am having a full octagon turned down to "half" octagon for a Winchester Special Sporting Rifle. It is a very heavy, 33" #3 full octagon barrel. It will have a wedding band at the transition, just past the end of the forearm. I dislike many half octagon barrel profiles when the round portion is much thinner than the minor diameter of the octagon. So, I am looking for a wedding band transition that will minimize the amount of metal removed (ie, retain maximum round barrel diameter). If anyone has any suggestions or photos of a favorite transition band, I would love to see it, either posted here or sent via email to brentd@iastate.edu.

This is a pretty generic, but nice wedding band from Hallowell, but to make it would result in a significant reduction of the barrel's diameter.
From Hallowell's:



As a follow up question, would you have the band just before the end of the forearm, or just after it?

BTW, since the search engines are now AI driven, getting good images or information out of Google, Duck-Duck, or Bing really sucks.

This is how C.E. Greener (W.W. Greener’s son) did it when converting an Octagonal barrelled .380 Rook Rifle to a .410 shotgun for his daughter Chloris “May” Greener’.

Amazingly he managed to keep the original matted top-flat and foresight so the forward section is really ovate and not round.

Well, that is pretty different. Probably not what I want to do here, but interesting for sure.

Attached is a picture of the round portion of a barrel turned to match the outside dimension of the octagon flats. This would achieve the largest barrel diameter.The points of the octagon have been filed down to transition to the barrel o.d.
Unfortunately that doesn’t answer your wedding ring question.

As you have described what you want is not possible. The attached photo shows why. Here is a long discussion on the subject with many pics of various styles.
Wedding bans

A wedding band can also be made up separately and then heated and slid down the round portion until it butts to the octagon and cools for a permanent fit. In doing them this way the octagon to round transition can be made "normal" and doesn't require more metal to be left high at that point to turn a wedding band. So the round part isn't too small and the octagon can be left as is also.

Here is what Val's idea would look like. I had thought of that but didn't like the concept. So when Val suggested it I went ahead and modeled up a 3D of the suggestion. Ban thickness .035 and width .300" Barrel is 1.00" across the flats. Round is also 1.00" diameter

Here is profile

Thanks for these posts. They are exactly the type of information I am looking for. I really like the band that is cut into the round rather than sitting above the round. If the barrel is first turned to look like what Ken as posted, then it could be carved to look like what LRF posted.

My barrel is en route to Arizona and should be there in a few days. All of this info is super helpful.

The top rifle below, is the rifle in question. Unfortunately, the barrel's size is not real obvious due to shadows, but it is a very heavy barrel that has only a small amount of taper. It is, I think, a bit larger than a #3. Maybe a #3.5. At 33", it is getting hard to hold on my finger tips for offhand chickens. The rifle is within 1/2 oz of the legal max, so it can lose a fair bit and still be quite comfortable to shoot. Somewhere I have a spreadsheet that should calculate the approximate weight loss.

Where would you place the band? Right in front of the forearm so it is octagon all the way to the tip of the wood, or back another 1/4" or forward? So many options. I have seen them every which way, and I do not know which I like best.

Then of course there is the whole discussion about whether an octagon vs half round vs round barrel is more accurate and which is which when you are shooting black or smokeless referencing back to barrel vibration, and of course how supporting the barrel either on the forearm or out near the muzzle feeds back to the barrel shape in the first place.........




Now you have gone a stuck the stick into the hornet's nest.
Good luck Brent

Yeah, there is a lot of hooey about that. But as far as i'm concerned, it is just so much BS, like so many things in the shooting world. How many things were absolute facts twenty years ago that are now absolutely wrong today? More than I want to think about.