doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com A short video on barrel sleeving.

Found this on the Horton & Sons website. It clarified a few things for me. Might be of interest to others.

Interesting .Having been heavily involved in sleeving myself its interesting to see other peoples methods .
I see you cut off in front of the bars where others including myself cut off in front of the chamber cones .We didn't see you method of machining the backends and I would have liked to see how or if your way differed from ours , bearing in mind with welded joints the marrying up of faces would not be so critical as with soldered joints .Did surprise me that you bored chokes in the lathe before fitting the tubes though

Gunman;

Your comments are in accord to my thoughts as well. Additionally from my point of view the sleeving lines are visible in the final work of this video, which in this day and time is not acceptable. The sleeving lines are visible both in the white and later after the barrels are blacked (view starting at about 12minutes 35 seconds into the video through 13 minutes 10 seconds into the video).

Several things I saw that I was not expecting in a workshop were the old single lever change gear box American made South Bend lathe --that the cast iron lathe bed looked very good in for a 80 year old lathe, the beautiful old fireplace with the wood/coal stove added in it, the shop dog.

Kindest Regards;
Stephen Howell

Well, I thought the video was pretty good and the results were pretty good too. The blacking on the barrels was excellent. The French or Belgian guy seemed to know his stuff. I really enjoyed watching the polishing process with the hone and cutting of the chokes. I wish the video showed more in depth shots of the soldering/joining process he used. I agree with gunman, seeing how the backend was machined would’ve been interesting too.

I honestly cannot see the joints. If they are visible, they must be very faint. I would be completely happy with that work. Bring him and his barrel browner over here for six months out of the year and I bet we could keep them very busy.

Yes, the blacking is excellent and the engraving work is also and how clean his workshop is. Only a very very few people (like Churchill trained Kirk Merrington) know how to invisibly sleeve a shotgun barrel by soft soldering and hence the TiG process is a great aid and joint hidder. I have had my hand at soft soldering sleeving and know how difficult it is, and know that I am not an expert at it and will not be, and as a result know how to see and where to look for the sleeving lines faint or not.


If you want to see the sleeving lines across the barrels stop the video at 13:06 and look at the line that crosses through the letter "N" of the engraved word "LONDON"---(13 minutes and 6 seconds) and you can also see it by stopping the video a 12:55 and looking at the letter "N". It is faint but outside in the sunlight it will glow.

The worse of all visible sleeving line work that I have ever seen was the done by Westley Richards when they were learning how to do sleeve barrels, or whoever was doing it for them.

In his day Malcolm Cruxton of Price St. Birmingham did excellent invisible soft soldered sleeving and I remember Malcolm telling me how other gunsmiths would visit his shop to watch him and learn the technique. Now in his 80's he continues gunsmithing at his home shop after the Price St. premises were demolished by the city of Birmingham.

Kind Regards
Stephen Howell

Steve,
Even the best can’t hide the line all the time. There is a guy who’s local to me that has a Smythe BLE that Kirk sleeved at the height of his USA work, undoubtedly when he was doing his best work….and the sleeve line is clearly visible, the work is of course excellent (barrel striking , profiling, etc), another friend had a Blanch SLNE that Kirk sleeved a decade or so ago, the line was clearly visible on it too, in fact, it took copious amount of blacking cycles to try to blend and hide it, I’m talking 20+ cycles.
Have you ever seen the sleeving work of Nick Mackinson? He worked for Wilds in Birmingham and his job was doing the machining on the back ends & tubes for sleeving. His sleeve work I’ve see is pretty damn good too. Unfortunately, even some of his stuff isn’t “invisible”. John Fosters work was the same. The only truly “invisible sleeving I’ve seen that is consistently invisible is the tig welded jobs coming out in the last few years. Pretty amazing stuff.
Who does that here in the states? 1 maybe 2 guys I’d guess.

Several points of yours I’m in 100% agreement, WR sleeved guns can be absolutely atrocious. Especially when marked on the outside of the barrels. Yuck.
TIG welding for sleeving was a huge leap forward.
I think what also gets left out of the conversation is the striking and profiling of the finished tubes. That is by far probably the most aesthetically important part of the job. Having that correct profile is hard to do, takes talent, skill, trained hands and eyes, and takes hours to accomplish. I wish the video would’ve shown some of that work too.
I think the young fella did a pretty fine job.

Fortunately my Westley Richards sleeved Edwinson Green, although an early job with external markings, is one of their neater jobs.

At the time the Proof House insisted on stamping SLEEVED on the outside of the breeches. I think WR’s decision to emblazon their name above that marking was to try to make a virtue out of a necessity.

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.

Stephen,

At 13 minutes 06 seconds, the barrels aren’t blued. I can see the line. It looks like the barrels came back from the engraver. After the barrels are blued, at 13 minutes 14 seconds. I can’t see the line. Can you see a sleeve line after 13:14?

Ken