Lathe Rifling Machine

[Bitter]

This is theoretical. Comments welcome.

[SMAG 12B/E5]

While your design is probably workable, there is a rack and pinion design that is more usable. Guy Lautard has a website that offers an excellent machine that is capable of deep hole drilling, reaming and rifling a barrel. With attention to details, you can produce a "match-grade" barrel from solid bar to finished barrel in an average of four hours. I purchased Lautards's package of two VHS tapes and ten or twelve pages of printed drawings and instructions.

[Bitter]

Glad you think so. Cheapness and ease of building was my priority, though. Do you have the URL for that guy's website ?

[The DreamWeaver]

http://www.lautard.com/ - And Bitter when are you going to sort out that huge picture?

[kingspaz]

'when are you going to sort out that huge picture'

i like it the way it is. gives a bit of madness to this place.

[zaibatsu]

I had an idea for a rifling machine a while ago, however this one would negate the use of a lathe, which can only be a good thing. Basically it was designed to be operated by hand, and consisted of the cutter, and a few gears. It's hard to elaborate without the luxury of a diagram. There would be a handle attatched to a gear, and turning the handle would turn the gear. The teeth of this gear would mesh with a "track", and so turning the handle would turn the gear which would make it move along the track. At the same time, there would be a set of gears connected to the first one, which would make the cutter turn at */foot, the ratio being determined by gear size. As the gear advances, the cutter is turned, cutting the rifling in the barrel. That's a little hard to understand, but I'm sure you can figure it out if you think about it for long enough :)

[Bitter]

What do you mean, sort it out ? It's good enough just to show the basic idea. It's not exactly a 10MB bitmap is it ?

[zaibatsu]

I think he's talking about your avatar, which he has no right to try and pressure you into changing - the only people with that right are Mega and NBK. I like it anyway :)

[yt2095]

for a short barrel only, i can see a cheap and nasty way you could accomplish this, although the cutting head would have to be your own design.

have you seen the old "automatic screwdrivers" the sort that you pushed down on and the screwdriver bit would turn on compression?

if you made or had something similar, make your barrel a little over the required length (a good idea anyway for finishing purposes) on the one end you could weld 2 bars across the bore, just wide enough for your turning shaft to pass through with little play.
push that right the way through the barrel till it emerges at the other side, then attatch your cutting bit, a gentle scoring for 1`st pass should be fine, then gradualy making the cut deeper with each pass, as if your doing barrel cleaning.
cut the welded end off when complete and finish the product.
THAT is about as cheap and nasty as i can think of and still be workable with patients.
as for a long barrel. i`m out of ideas at the moment.

All the best :)

[zaibatsu]

Hey, just had an idea, how about etching rifling into the bore? Just thought that isn't a method I've seen mentioned before (other than EDM) but I bet there're reasons against it :)

However, it would mean you didn't have to keep shimming the cutting tool etc etc - lets get thinking!

For a short barrel (IE pistol) I don't really think you need to worry about rifling it, anything over 15-20yards could be done better with a smg anyway.

[The DreamWeaver]

Regarding the avatar. I simply implied that although it may add a little madness like kingspaz suggested, I believe it to throw the "cleanliness" affect to the whole forum out the window. As it distorts the page layout.

Would it not be best if everyone had a set limit to the size of the picture? (In pixels of course, otherwise people might get confused.)

But, alas - only a suggestion.

[stickfigure]

I like your new Avatar, your old one of Alex was cool also. I can only hope to become a senior forum member and have my own, someday... I can only think a huge Barney/Godzilla parody stomping on Cop Cars would be somewhat as cool.

[Bitter]

I'm glad you think so.

[akinrog]

Regarding hand rifling, I found a website via google wherein the Author (with an alias Fatman or his name I don't know) does hand rifling of the barrels. He claims that he does this for several years by means of a machine called "Tobacco Juice Annie". The site also includes a short video with low resolution showing this man doing hand rifling with his Tobacco Juice Annie. The links for the web site is http://www.midiowa.com/toadhallrifleshop/rifling.htm and for the vide http://www.midiowa.com/toadhallrifleshop/Business%20Card/Rifling.mpg.

Does anybody have the book advertised on the website? What kind of mechanisms and designs are used? In addition the author claims that the machine is seabolt design wooden rifling machine. Anybody has information about what a seabolt design is?

In addition, I also found a web site containing an article about the barrel steels, rifling methods (namely cut rifling, button rifling and hammer rifling). Although the first two requires a rifling machine of some sort the last one only requires a tungsten carbide mandrel containing grooves and landings thereon corresponding those grooves and landing inside a barrel. The last method seemed (at least to me) to be feasible enoýgh to be made by an ordinary workshop.
The barrel blank is somewhat shorter by 30% of the intended barrel length and is drilled just to house the tungsten carbide mandrel and after inserting the mandrel it is hammered by means of a method called rotary hammering. After rotary hammering the tungsten carbide mandrel cuts its imprints inside the barrel and barrel length attains its regular length due to hammering. As this method is simpler than a barreling machine, I think anybody who may obtain a tungsten carbide mandrel containing corresponding grooves and landings thereon might forge a barrel in this way. In addition the article claims that (I saw this claim in many other gun related site), the barrels produced in this manner is highly wear resistant, since it was designed to produce wear-resistant barrels used for heavy machine guns which fires several round per minute during WWII. Links to this article is http://www.border-barrels.com/articles/bmart.htm.

Now my plan is : obtain a tungsten carbide smooth rod, have it machined by a proper workshop to contain the spirals on it and use this as a mandrel for forging by hand. I am very well aware that machinening a tungsten carbide mandrel is a very hard (impossible?) for an ordinary workshop. And spiral must have an angle of approximately 15 degrees. And drill a bore on 410 steel blank which is (as article suggested) somewhat shorter than the intended barrrel by 30%. Put the mandrel inside this bore and forge it by hand hammering. I am sure hand hammering will be also a hell difficult.
In addition, article states that the barrels produced in this manner also contain radial stresses which are hard to eliminate. Anybody knows a good article source of information to eliminate such stresses?
I hope this information is useful.

[daysleeper]

Here is an Idea I've been thinking up for a not so complicated way of rifling a barrel. This may be a little out of place
but I think it fit's here.

If one takes a piece of sheet metal say 1/16 inch thick and cut the rifling on one side of the metal while it was flat then
use the proper sized round stock to roll this barrel liner into the desired shape, you would have a tube with the rifling cut inside of it.

This is not strong enough for a barrel obviously, but then you have a a piece of larger tubing the diameter of a standard barrel
bore out the inside to accept the rifled tube and either silver braze it for 22's and such or plug weld the sleeve from the outside in for larger more powerful rounds.

The outside tube would be reamed for the chamber, just slip in your rifled tube and go from there, there are some details to be ironed out I'm sure, but i think this could work.

Laying out the rifling in a flat format onto the sheet metal is the hard part, I guess taking an actuall barrel and cutting it open and flattening it out would give better insight.

What do ya'll think?

[john_smith]

Hmm...what about letting a workshop make a button blank - basically a rod with a slightly thicker section in it - and etching grooves into that instead of the barrel itself? Sorta like Marlins or (yuck) Hi-points "mini-rifling", with about 10-12 small lands and grooves. A button rifling machine itself seems rather easy, an OTC, hand operated hydraulic press might even do.

[akinrog]

In my opinion having a workshop make a button blank is a brilliant idea when you consider the hammering method I mentioned. However in this case SWIM must have such workshop machine more than one buttons, each of which has slightly larger than a previous one. You start with the smallest button to rifle the bore than proceed the larger ones to complete rifling. However, I saw some difficulties with these approach :
1. How SWIM must achieve regular twist using a hand operated hydraulic press during button rifling. In addition (in my humble opinion) it will be very hard to keep the barrel blank steady while SWIM is driving the button inside the bore. It will also be very hard to achieve a proper twist while pressing the button in the bore.
2. Since ýt will be really difficult to cut riflings inside the barrel with a single run, SWIM must have more than one buttons to cut rifling. So there rises another problem to maintain and follow the previous rifling grooves inside the barrel. Assume that SWIM cut the riflings inside the barrel using the first (and smallest) button. When it is the larger one's turn, how SWIM shall achieve the exact pattern (i.e. twist) during process?

What I trying to say, button rifling shall also need some devices / mechanisms to assure right twist and such devices /mechanisms must also ensure accurate repeatability.

[Bert]

Are any of you all familiar with how backwoods gunsmiths rifled their hand forged barrels? Kind of similar to yt2095's screwdriver method, but hand made and wooden. Worked fine for BP rifles, sub minute of angle accuracy at 100 yards was obtainable with careful work.

[Jacks Complete]

Guys, I have no idea what you mean by Bitter's image. I can't see anything, and his post count shows as N/A, no profile buttons, nor email, etc.

Anyway, back on topic:

A button rifleing cutter would be pretty easy to make, or have made. Just ensure that the cutting edges are at the right angle so that the whole thing "self taps" as it cuts through. To get it through, I would suggest making a high powered hydralic press with a basic bearing, (though I don't know how well that would stand up to the pressure). Use lots of lube, in through the open end.
As the limit of travel was reached, the jack would be reset to the bottom, and a further length of rod would be introduced, and so on, until the barrel button was through.

Any thoughts?

Someone on the boards a few weeks ago suggested a hydraulic press as a project. I am trying to find the highest load bottle jack I can. I know that 6 tonnes can be had, but have only seen 1.5 ton to date.

[xyz]

Jack's Complete, they are talking about his image (avatar) because this thread was made back in June 2003 when Bitter was still a moderator.

IIRC the image in question was an evil looking Thomas the Tank Engine about to ram a police car.

[akinrog]

I found the following link for hand rifling of the barrels. The article describes how barrels are rifled in past through so called rifling benches. The article contains a simplified drawing of the rifling mechanism and describes how rifling is made. But the method is quite complicated (especially at this time of a laborious day of working), so I could not figure out how the method is exactly carried out. However someone with greater knowledge of English and mecahnical engineering, may figure it out more.

The link is http://blackpowderonline.com/JAN03BrrlHdWyPt5.htm
IF the link changes, I also saved the html file as a single file that I can attach it to message.
Regards

Wow this site is a gold mine.
I found another article containing info about rifling methods. But don't try to enter the site directly. It only blossoms to good ol' google.
The link is http://www.blackpowderonline.com/DEC02BrrlThHdWyPt4.htm.

Maybe someone with good hacking skills may obtain all useful information from this site.
Regards,

[akinrog]

Sorry for posting very frequently. Since I found several items on the rifling process and the mod of this forum is slow for moderating my posts (not due to his slowness but due to my rapidness), but I collected some links about the rifling and wanted to share these links with you. Since one of the web links contains a rifling method which excited me a lot I could not wait for my previous post being moderated and posted here. The web link which excited me a lot contains a method called electrochemical rifling. This process is described as follows (I am citing it here since I shall post a few links, I think somebody may miss this process) :
Quote :
An electrode (cathode) that has metal strips in the shape of the rifling is placed in the barrel (anode) and the the assembly is submerged in a salt solution. An electric current is applied and the electrode is moved down the length of the barrel and twisted to create the spiral shaped grooves. As the current travels from the barrel to the electrode metal is removed by electrolysis thus forming the grooves in the barrel. This process creates the rifling in the barrel very quickly and does not require consumable tooling.
Unquote :
Now the links :
http://www.blackpowderonline.com/ARCHIVES1.htm (this is the main link of the articles of the site which I referred to as a "gold mine".)
http://www.snipercountry.com/articles.htm (I could not have time to review entire articles but one of them is very interesting (about rifling))
http://www.blackpowderonline.com/AUG02Brrlthehrdway.htm (this is one of the links that "gold mine" site includes)
http://www.blackpowderonline.com/Oct02BrrlhrdwyPt2.htm (this is part two of the previous one)
http://www.blackpowderonline.com/NOV02BrrlHdWy.htm (this is part three of the previous one)
http://www.blackpowderonline.com/DEC02BrrlThHdWyPt4.htm (this is part four of the previous one)
http://www.blackpowderonline.com/JAN03BrrlHdWyPt5.htm (this is part five (which contains basic concepts of an (ancestor?) rifling machine))
http://www.blackpowderonline.com/FEB03BrrlthHdWyPt6.htm (this is part six)
http://www.armoryhill.com/graphics/Williamsburg021.jpg (this is the very image of the primitive (?) rifling machine)
http://www.firearmsid.com/A_bulletIDrifling.htm (this is the link which contains electrochemical rifling process which excited me a lot)

I found another link regarding electrochemical rifling. In this article the salt I cited above is stated to be Sodium Nitrate. Anyway please find the link below :

http://www.firearmsid.com/Feature%20Articles/ecr/electrochemicalrifling.htm

I hope this info is useful for forumites.
Regards

[akinrog]

Since this new bit of info can be missed by the forum members I need to send a new post. I found on United State Patent and Trademarks Office web site a detailed description of a electrochemical rifling method.

Patent number is 4,690,737. Here is the link to that patent : http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=10&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1=(electrochemical.TTL.+AND+rifling)&OS=ttl/electrochemical+and+rifling&RS=(TTL/electrochemical+AND+rifling)

Hope this bit of info is useful.
Regards

[JoeJablomy]

Personally, ECM looks the best to me. Hammer rifling requires very serious equipment-it's probably impossible to do by hand, and the mandrel would probably break. Anyway, you have to extract it after the rotary forging process, and that requires a hydraulic pull/press. Cut rifling is next in the amount of infrastructure, and button rifling requires both less infrastructure and less skill in operation than the other two, but still needs a hydraulic cylinder at least as long as the barrel you want to rifle, and in my opinion that would be several feet because anything shorter or smaller should just be bought. To be clear, though, buttoning is not a cutting process. Cutting with a single, specially made cutter is called broaching. A button actually presses grooves into the steel. Speaking of which, the barrel has to be seriously stress relieved after buttoning, unless you want it to crack down its length. For more on buttoning, look here:
http://www.riflebarrels.com/articles/default.htm (sorry about the lack of html)

Anyway, for ECM or 'ECR,' I guess all you'd really need is a big salt tank, maybe with pump, a low voltage transformer, some kind of helical guide setup, and the electrode. You could probably make the helical guide out of the same piece of plastic as the electrode, and use an alignment tube/fitting attached to one end of the barrel. With some forethought, you could hold the barrel vertical and feed electrolyte under regulated pressure from the bottom. Instead of a really big trough/tank, you would only need a sump to set the bottom in. (On sceond thought, this would result in a really Tall aparatus - 12-14 ft. for a reasonable 20mm barrel)

[john_smith]

anything smaller or shorter should just be bought
Yeah, you lucky bastards in US...For the rest, I really think the aforementioned buton rifling method might work, at least for handguns. Though, ECR seems even more appealing now. Is it actually necessary to have a moving electrode and guide or could you use a large fixed one going through the whole barrel? Of course it would lower the current density and make the process slower, but there'd be no need for a mechanism driving the thing down the barrel at a slow constant speed.

[akinrog]

In my opinion, moving (rotating) electrode thing is a misleading clue to create confusion on the process, although I am not very well sure about it. If you look at the patent link above, you shall notice it mentions no moving (rotating) electrode.

But, I noticed another difficulty with ECR. :confused:

When I searched ECM over the net, many sources state that several thousand of Amps needed to perform ECM. This migth most probably prove difficult (impossible?) for a homeworkshop enthuiast, since I don't see any way to find a DC power supply which is capable of feeding several thousands Amps. But the method states that this setup is capable of machining a part within a few seconds so the powerfull power supply may serve to this end. Then if you have a less powerfull power supply then you may have to apply current to the electrode setup for a longer period of time. (Just a thought since I have no means to test this.)

Now from what I compiled, SWIM devised a small plan which SWIM may be capable of doing and achieving rifling inside the bore. Assume that you have a power supply of the sort I mentioned above and a barrel blank (short one for a handmade machine gun or SMG), a strong pipe etc. which is properly drilled, reamed, lapped, etc. to the correct dimensions and with adequate wall thickness.

materials needed :
- a good power supply capable of feeding enough amps,
- a barrel blank preprocessed to the required dimensions,
- a plastic tank, basin, etc. capable of harboring the entire blank and some more things,
- cables with adequate cross sectional area,
- a submersible pump
- a soft hose

You simply fill a plastic tank capable of harboring entire length of barrel with sodium nitrate (chloride?). Then you use a modified lab stand and clamp to keep it fixed in the saline tank. Then you take a brass rod whose outer diameter is slightly smaller than the bore of the barrel. Draw three sets of spiral lines with a marker along the length of the brass rod with the method which is referred to in one of the articles contained in the goldmine site I mentioned. Then apply (electric) insulation tape on the brass rod, using the lines as guides for spiral form, cutting the breadth of the tape as required and trying to create quite tiny exposed brass surfaces representing the grooves inside the bore of the barrel. Apply adequate number of layers of insulation tape over the brass rod to ensure it tightly fits inside the bore and also allows enough electrolyte flow through channels created when you fit the brass rod setup inside the bore. It might be very proper IMHO to drill and tap a small hole at one end of the brass rode to fix a screw to connect the negative lead of the power supply.

Now you take a soft hose which is capable of receiving entire outer diameter of the barrel blank. You insert the tight fitting brass electrode setup inside the bore (Important, the brass rod setup must not be very tight lest you may disturb the grooves created by the soft electric insulation tape thereby creating irregular lands and grooves or nothing at all!). After insertion of the brass rode setup, you insert the barrel blank in the soft hose and connect other end of the soft hose to a pumping setup (which I thought simple submersible pumps are suitable for this purpose) to pump saline solution through the tiny channels between the barrel blank and brass rod with spirals over it. Pumping necessary for removing the oxides removed from the bore.

It is now necessary to immerse entire setup (barrel with positive lead, brass electrode setup inserted which is connected to negative lead) inside the the saline tank.

Thereafter you apply current to brass electrode and blank barrel (strong pipe?) and thus metal is removed from the inner surface of the barrel bore to create grooves while pumping the saline solution inside the barrel.

But since we are using a makeshift power supply, it might be necessary to experiment with this setup to achieve correct amount of metal removal.

What about this idea? I would like to have your feedbacks on this and please fill the gaps since this is only a theoretical plan.

[JoeJablomy]

I haven't read the whole patent, but yes it does talk about a mobile cathode. A number of other net sources I've seen talk about moving electrodes. For instance, some shop machines entire blisks (bladed discs) for gas turbines by a single step ECM process. This involves removing vast amounts of metal between the blades, and the electrode obviously has to move down and twist while etching those spaces. I think this also explains why thousands ov amps are needed -that thing must have multiple square feet of electrode area, and is etching at a very fast rate. An electrode to work on 2" of the bore of a barrel at once would need much less current.
Incidentally, I've been thinking, and it seems to me that a fast etching process is going to be better, thus the travelling electrode, because slower processes would allow ions to be drawn to/from areas you don't want etched away. Don't know how clear that is, but what I mean is that if the electrode is only a few inches long and a given area of the bore is only near it for a few seconds, there is less time for the lands to be eroded by ion leakage.
Anyway, I really like your idea for an electrode, but a whole barrel electrode would exacerbate the whole current supply problem.
One other thing: forcing electrolyte down long, winding, really narrow pathways would take a hell of a lot of pressure, and would also limit your etching rate because of the oxide/debris that would be generated. You would have to use really deep channels on a full length electrode to accomodate the electrolyte. Alternatively, you could cut channels in a solid bar to match the lands, and let the raised areas etch the grooves. Don't know how well that would work, but someday I might try it.

[Jacks Complete]

You can feed that kind of current. Take the 10 amp 240 supply down to 3 volts, using a surplus electrolysis transformer. The external turns will be bus bar, bolted together, about ten wraps worth!

or you could make one (but don't forget the isolation transformer!)

I am not sure if you need to use DC or not, but I would. You will need one hefty diode! They are called "stub diodes" and are rated to 1000 Amps. Shop around.

[akinrog]

JoeJablomy:

Yes you are right, I read the patent again (last time I only read it skimmingly and since I had a fixed idea, I thought it does not contain any mobile electrode) and I notice it realy mentions about a moving/rotating electrode.

Anyway back to topic. SWIM also noticed another flaw in his thinking. The patent (which IMHO is the most reliable source of information, although patents are designed to contain some vagueness) mentions about high pressure chamber implying that the electrolyte must be forced through the channels created as I stated above. So a simple submersible pump IMHO shall not do the trick of removing the oxides, etc. in the originally described setup.

But SWIM thinks the sealing and insulation created by insulation tapes applied on the brass electrode must prevent electrochemical removal of the metal on the adjacent areas of the exposed portions of the bore to a certain extent and IMHO keep such unwanted metal removal at minimum. If SWIM would perform such process using the above devised setup, he might opt for a small amperage power supply and for several (more then 10) layers of insulation tape (on a relatively smaller brass rod) to facilitate removal of debris by means of pumping, since SWIM shall (most probably) have no pressure chamber and complicated /pricy high pressure pump.

Moreover, using a fixed electrode setup must eliminate complicated mechanical device which is needed for twisting movement of the electrode setup. But this time SWIM must have a smaller diameter brass rod to accomodate more layers (e.g. 10+) to create say 2 mm deep spiral channels to allow better circulation of the electrolyte. And SWIM in this case shall use not nitrate salt but chloride salt to prevent formation of debris forming oxides but (most probably) water soluble metal salts thereby allowing for easy removal of the electrochemically etched metal.

[Jacks Complete]

Surely this is being rather more complex than required?

You could just shake the water bath fairly often, and it would do the same thing. If you wanted to get really clever, you could easily arrange it so that there was a head of salt water, and it flowed through the barrel from the top. You could even just slowly empty the solute out, and tip it back in the top.

I think it is not going to be a problem unless you have a thousand amp PSU and you want to cut the rifling in 30 seconds or less.

[JoeJablomy]

akinrog: The residue will be an oxide unless you use strong acid for the electrolyte. Even then there will probably be oxide.
Aluminum anodizing uses acid and does make aluminum salt with it, but of course the whole point of the process is to form an oxide film, which it does. Water is also electrolyzed and plenty of hydrogen escapes; that's where the oxygen comes from.
Normal salt water corrosion of steel makes rust, ECM will do the same.
Also, you can still find the article on ECM'ed blisks. Turns out a lot of the metal is probably removed by normal milling, and ECM makes the part 90% complete. Anyway, look at the picture in it. The part right out of the machine has rust streaks.
OK, covering the lands-to-be by contact with the tape would be pretty effective at shielding them. But now you're layering about 30 tiny strips of tape percisely onto a brass rod. Sounds complicated. The way I have in mind is, you cut one helical groove on a plastic rod that matches your twist rate [indexing rod]. Then you attach the short electrode to the end, with an insulated lead coming off the leading end. You make a 'bench' out of a large improvised trough, and mount the barrel in it with end blocks. One of them has the lead coming out and the pump feed going in, the other one has fluid exit holes and an extra 1-4 inches of length, through which you drill a hole the same size as your indexing rod. You cross drill into the guide hole, and insert a pin that indexes to the helical groove on your indexing rod. The end blocks would of course be plastic, as would the indexing rod and probably the electrode body. The rod would obviously have to fit down the bore. Alternatively, you could make the indexing rod and electrode out of one piece of Al rod, which wouldn't be all that big for rifle and especially smg sized barrels. Once you have the grooves machined into it, you would anodize the whole thing to insulate its surfaces, except for the bottoms of the electrode grooves, of course. All you have to do is smudge grease or any number of other things in them after the pre-anodizing cleaning has been finished, making very sure you only mask the groove areas. It might be a good idea to experiment with and perfect anodizing before you try to make a gun part :) (alternatively, an anodizing shop could probably do the whole thing for you, or you could cut the electrode grooves after anodizing. This way, the indexing rod is also the lead-wire.
Other notes: you would have to make the indexing rod significantly narrower than the bore to allow flow; the electrode would be just less than the bore but would have the grooves. The grooves wouldn't need to be very deep because they don't run very far on the 2" electrode.
The last complication is moving the electrode down the bore. This could just be done by hand. Mark off every 1/4" and watch a metronome or something.

Jack: What's an isolation transformer?
I was thinking of taking a large intact transformer, and maybe even just winding a new secondary with 1/4" grounding cable. Cut off the leads for the original. Would this light on fire or something? How about a battery charger? Anyway, for the traveling electrode in any normal sized barrel, I really doubt more than 50 amps would really be needed. I guess I could do some calculations to find the amount of material to be removed, and convert that into a theoretical total charge, time, and amperage.

[JoeJablomy]

OK, here's what my napkin looks like:
I guess I'll use a .45 caliber barrel, and make it 6" long for an imaginary smg.
The groove depth should probably be .005, and assuming half the bore is grooved and half is lands, the material to be removed has a cross section of
.45*Pi*.005=.0071 in^2 and in 6" length has volume .0424 in^3.
Now converting to metric for molar stuff..
Online conversions says it's .695 cc.
Assuming our imaginary steel has a density of 7.8 g/cc, the mass to be removed is
5.4g
A mole of Fe is 55.8g, so we have .097 moles, or 5.85x10^22 atoms.
Now, if I understand the chemistry right, each Fe atom needs 3 electrons exchanged, so a total of 1.75x10^23 electrons have to change hands, give or take a few. This is about 28,000 coulombs.
Well, damn! You would need 1000 amps to do it in 30s.
At 50 amps, the 6" would take 558s, 9.3 min, and more because it won't be totally efficient. One thing you might need good electrolyte flow for is cooling, not to mention bringing in water to electrolyze for O and flushing out H2. Maybe you could use nitrate salts to provide O without the H2, as that seems to have been suggested; it might even speed up the process. Does anyone have a good idea how to figure what resistance and power will be? Also, how much current do you think a grounding cable can handle at maybe 6V?

[Spartin13]

i hope that this bit of information will help. a while back i had a book (i lent out never to see again) on barrel making. button rifling is by far the easyest to do. the button would be made of carbide. the carbid would be oval shaped with finished size lands and groove cut into it at the proper angle of the rate of twist. then the button is silver soudered to a rod that is longer than the barrel. near the end of the rod there is to be a bearing so the rod will turn freely as the button goes threw the barrel. the barrel is locked down and the rod/button is pulled threw. the whole rifling is done in one pass. the best way to pull it threw is hydrolicly. a number of years ago i was going to use the hydrices/ return stroke from my logsplitter to pull buttons threw. 20 ton hydro more than enough force for one pass. hope this helps

[john_smith]

Come to think about it, a moving electrode is probably better since it'll ensure that the grooves are smooth in longitudinal direction.
As for button rifling, anybody have an idea what's the minimum necessary force required for the press?

[akinrog]

Actually I am suggesting the fixed electrode design out of my laziness :p. It seems hard (at least) for me to create a mechanism to do the twisting motion accurately and in a reproducible manner. Instead I prefer a fixed design to achieve slow metal removal by applying small currents.
JoeJablomy. I think I forgot my chemistry although I was once studying chemical engineering. You are right, the residue shall be oxide. And you are right again about the difficulty and feasibility of winding several layers of tape on the brass. :( I made a small tape winding experiment on a pencil and it is hell difficult with even only a single pass. The process needs delicate hands which an adult lacks. I now think of glueing tiny (1 -1,5 mm) rubber strips over the pencil in order to see if I can do that. If I can find time and thin rubber sheet, I shall try it on the pencil. I think you say the ECR process creates rust which is not good for the barrel. Right? So in the links about barrel making (namely http://www.border-barrels.com/articles/bmart.htm) there is a process called lapping. For example SWIM may do lapping after ECR to eliminate rust from the barrel.

[JoeJablomy]

Akinrog: Obviously, iron oxide is rust, so it will be on the cut surfaces. Lapping wouldn't be a bad idea because ECR does very little to polish or smooth the inside of the barrel. On the other hand, for improvised stuff it doesn't need to be that fancy (it doesn't even need to be that good for S&W). I guess you just have to hope the rust won't be stuck on hard and the surface deep pitted, and run a bunch of patches through it. The first few bullets should blow any other rust out, and since it is mildly abrasive and evenly distributed down the barrel, it might be good for fire lapping. Maybe.
One advantage to the whole barrel electrode is that the lower current density might need less voltage. Might also melt your transformer if you're not careful, but so would any other.
Incidentally, what does SWIM mean? I've been picking up a few of the other acronyms, but SWIM and KIFE still elude me.

[akinrog]

I guess you just have to hope the rust won't be stuck on hard and the surface deep pitted, and run a bunch of patches through it. The first few bullets should blow any other rust out, and since it is mildly abrasive and evenly distributed down the barrel, it might be good for fire lapping. Maybe.
You are right also about denting. I inserted two needles in a saline solution and they become exteremely dented and rough, and I easily assume that this will be same for the barrel. :( But one advantage is since SWIM does not need to remove very much metal, SWIM thinks the barrel might be less dented. BTW what about using HCl? May be this eliminates problem of oxides to a certain extent! :)

Incidentally, what does SWIM mean? I've been picking up a few of the other acronyms, but SWIM and KIFE still elude me.

SWIM means Somebody Who Is not Me. I don't know what KIFE is too.

[Crane]

Using an anodized aluminum rod as the electrode/indexing rod sounds like a good idea. I've found nail polish to be fairly useful in guarding the aluminum during anodizing, zvand might be easier to remove than grease.

But, it took me a good few tries to get an acceptable, even coating on the aluminum. So, if you're looking to DIY-anodize, then you should probably practice on some scrap first (like JoeJablomy said). ;)

[dougpfaff]

idea of how to turn a lathe into a rifling machine.zip (17.6 KB, 128 views)

Could I get a copy of the info at the link mentioned in the first post?

[ozboy]

I have uploaded a pdf on electro chemical machining to rapidshare.

It seems to be a lot simpler in theory than practice.

http://rapidshare.de/files/28274260/electro-chemical_1_.machining.rar.html

[sparkchaser]

For ECM/ECR you actually need extremely HIGH voltage to do it with speed. Most commercial tanks use 30,000 volts or more. One good thing is that the amps are very low so it's harder to fry yourself badly. Another place they use ECM is in turbojet engines. Big manufacturers are able to create large parts to extremely high tolerance by using CAM/CNC that wield copper electrodes instead of hardened steel bits. An entire compressor wheel can take less than an hour to be produced from a massive billet block!

[dougpfaff]

Here's a link to a rifling attachment for a lathe: http://www.homemetalshopclub.org/news/jun98/jun98.html

[dougpfaff]

Here's a couple links to a concept for a lathe-based rifling attachment:

http://www.homemetalshopclub.org/news/jun98/jun98.html#Rifling
http://www.homemetalshopclub.org/news/jul98/jul98.html#Rifling

This may already have been mentioned.

[Gunner2]

Ive got video (both parts) about Rifling Machine by Bill Webb & Guy Lautard .Just in case anybody needs it.

[a3990918]

Ive got video (both parts) about Rifling Machine by Bill Webb & Guy Lautard .Just in case anybody needs it.

Would like to see it. Can you up-load to Mega-Upload?? :confused: Thanks...

[generallisimo]

I understand peoples desire to have free download services. One of the best right now is Media Fire. Give it a shot.

Gunner2 I would really like that video.

However I stand by Rapidshare.com as an uploader.

[a3990918]

.

However I stand by Rapidshare.com as an uploader.


I like RS also but they don't offer a free Happy Hour to downloaders like Mega does. 6 hrs of Premium access per day for free. Rapidshare can't even begin to compete with it.

For indivisual files, RS is definately faster but for multiples or large files split in to segments, Mega is by far the faster.

[generallisimo]

I like RS also but they don't offer a free Happy Hour to downloaders like Mega does. 6 hrs of Premium access per day for free. Rapidshare can't even begin to compete with it.

For indivisual files, RS is definately faster but for multiples or large files split in to segments, Mega is by far the faster.


Therefore my suggestion for media fire. Free all day long.

[Gunner2]

OK , this is what I ve mentioned before (see my pr.message above): http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P6M22ULG This is first part of CD1, there will be 3 parts per 1 CD.. In order to extract you gotta have all 3 parts. From time to time I will be posting them here.Its bloody job to upload 300megs per part.

[Gunner2]

first part of CD 1 http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P6M22ULG (290mb)
second part of CD1 http://www.megaupload.com/?d=S23IQGTP (290mb)
and third part of CD 1 http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FJ8AOGYG (70mb)

download all three parts to same folder , then click on first part and unrar wherever you want. In first CD mostly is descrybed how to build drilling-rifling machine. In second (will be posted) mostly how to operate in diferent modes.

[akinrog]

first part of CD 1
second part of CD1
and third part of CD 1

I would be very glad if someone can upload it to FTP or rapidshare.

[Lenkers]

Bill_Webb_s_Rifling_Machine_supplement.pdf (http://rapidshare.com/files/104628982/Bill_Webb_s_Rifling_Machine_supplement.pdf.html)

I found this. Is it already on the CD´s?

[Gunner2]

Bill_Webb_s_Rifling_Machine_supplement.pdf (http://rapidshare.com/files/104628982/Bill_Webb_s_Rifling_Machine_supplement.pdf.html)

I found this. Is it already on the CD´s?

Yep, it is!! Thanks for the Supplement to the Video! Second video part CD2 has been uploaded.

Video CD #2:

1part: http://rapidshare.com/files/109041895/part1.rar.html
2part: http://rapidshare.com/files/109058986/part2.rar.html
3part: http://rapidshare.com/files/109312218/part3.rar.html
4part: http://rapidshare.com/files/109603707/part4.rar.html
5part: http://rapidshare.com/files/109912296/part5.rar.html
6part: http://rapidshare.com/files/109910715/part6.rar.html

After you've got all 6 parts, put them to the same folder , click on the first one, unrar wherever you want.

[akinrog]

This two parts video of a metal lathe rifling machine is now on FTP under the folder of UPLOAD\Akinrog.

I take this opportunity to thank to gunner2 for making available this rare stuff. :)