BARREL, GUN. The relation which the barrels of small-arms bear to the stock, lock, and other parts, is described in such articles as MusKET, PISTOL, RIFLE, REVOLVER, BREECII-LOADING ARMS, etc.; but the remarkable processes of manufacturing these bar rels may be briefly noticed once for all.
The iron for Al good musket-barrels contains a portion, of steel. or undergoes some kind of steeling process. Horseshoe nails or stubs, after much violent. usage, yield a very tough kind of iron when re-heated; and English gun-makers have been accustomed to buy such refuse on the continent; but the foreign makers now use the,old nails them-. selves; and Birmingham has to rely mostly on various home supplies of old tough, iron. The best barrels are now made in England of laminated, twisted. and Damascus. steel. To prepare laminated steel, Mr. Greener, n celebrated Birmingham gunsmith, col lects scraps of saws. steel-pens, files, springs, and steel-tools, from the various workshops; cuts them into small and nearly equal pieces; cleans and polishes them by revolving in a cylinder: fuses them into a semi-fluid state; gathers them into a "bloom" or mass; forges this bloom with a three-ton hammer; hardenS and solidifies it. with a tilt-hammer; rolls it into rods; cuts each rod into pieces 6 in. long; welds these pieces together; repeats the rolling, cutting. and welding, several times; and thus finally brings the metal into a very hard, tough, fibrous, and uniform state. Twisted steel for barrels is made by taking thin plates of iron and steel, laying them alternately one on another in a pile. welding them by heat and hammering, and twisting them by very powerful mechanical agency, until there are twelve or fourteen complete turns to an inch; the length becomes reduced one half, and the thickness doubled by this twisting. Damascus steel barrels are made of steel which has undergone a still further series.of welding- and twisting opera tions. Stub Damascus barrels are made of a mixture of old files with old horse-nails; the files are heated. cooled in water, broken with hammers, and pounded iu a mortar into
small fragments; three puts of these fragments are mixed with five of stub; and the mixture Us fused, forged, rolled, and twisted. An inferior kind of Damascus twist is made by iutcrlaying scraps of sheet-iron with charcoal, and producing an appearance of twist, but without the proper qualities. T hreep nny-skelp and tteopenny-skelp are inferior kinds of barrel-iron; and the worst of all is sham-darn 8kelp, of which gun-barrels are made for hawking at a cheap price at country-fairs, and for barter with the natives in Africa and the backwoods and prairies of America.
The gun-barrel manufacture of England is now almost wholly conducted at Birming ham and at Enfield, very few barrels being made elsewhere. the best. barrels are all twisted into form. The skelps, or long strips of prepared steel, are twisted into a close spiral a few inches long; several of these spirals are welded end to end; and the fissures are closed up by heating and hammering. The rough barrel, with a core or mandril tem porarily thrust in it, is placed in a groove, and hammered cold until the metal becomes very dense, close, strong, and elastic. The interior is then bored truly cylindrical by a nicely-adjusted rotating cuttiug-tool. If, on narrow inspection, the interior is found to be straight and regular, the exterior is then ground oa a rapidly revolving stone, and finally turned in a lathe. Commoner barrels are not twisted; the skelps are heated, laid in a semi-cylindrical groove, hammered till they assume the form of that groove, placed two and two together, and heated and hammered until one B. is made from the two halves. See PROOF OF FIRE-ARMS; and RIFLED ARMS.
Common barrels are browned externally with some kind of chemical stain; but the best are rubbed with fine files, and polished with steel burnishers.