barrel modification, have to ask...

[huntinguy]

So, I was looking at GM and they have a couple smooth barrels listed. One inch by 40 and 45 42 inches long. Now, where I come from, that is a lot of weight to pack around.

So, warranty not with standing I will ask.

Can a barrel successfully be shrunk or reshaped?

Say, take a fully octagonal barrel and make a straight tapered barrel or a half octagonal half round barrel out of it.

Will removing the material release stress and "bend" the barrel?

While I am thinking. I have seen barrels with engraving around the breech, doesn't that introduce stress fractures into the barrel? At work they get really testy about scratches on "stress" parts.

(like I NEED another project... three guns, two jeeps, a driveway and a shed... all in work... Oh, ya, and an attic   )

[pathfinder]

The work you want to do on MUZZLELOADING barrels will not adversly effect the integrity of the barrel. I have turned down octagon barrel's with no ill affect's. Engraving wont hurt the barrels at all. The types of metals your working with sound pretty high tech,M/Ler's are ,comparitivly speaking,pretty low tech.

I'm NOT a metalurgist in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM! All I've stated was from a TOTALLY ameture perspective,and should be used as such. That being said,non of the barrel's I've worked on ever had a problem with accuracy or warping. Again,not knowing where your experiance with metal comes from,the pressures we work with are no-where near what modern gun's deal with. WE ARE CAVEMEN!

[greyhunter]

[quote=" WE ARE CAVEMEN!

[huntinguy]

I used to make things people broke.

Now I make things for people to use to make things that people pray they don't break.

Ya, I had the chance to work with some pretty slick stuff when I was in the test world. Them educated engineer type get persnickety though.

Back to the question at hand.  Back when I was a whee one, I worked with a guy that made a few gun barrels and he talked about barrels moving and having to keep straitening them until they were at the finish profile. So that stuck in my head. Mind you he was making his own barrels in... maybe the 40s give or take. I guess stress relieving has come a long way in the last 70 or so years...

Then I just finished reading a paper on ML barrel steels, the writer was not to fond of leaded steels. There was some interesting dissertations about stresses in the paper.

I also finished reading... about the French in Florida and the various people talked about all the guns that blew up and the body parts that went missing. But those were guns in the 1600s.

So everything kind of came to a head when I saw the barrels at GM and then I started thinking and well...

Okay, I am knuckle dragging back to my cave.  

[Captchee]

Cutting it down , wont stress it . Engraving wont stress it . It also wont effect the barrels ability to withstand pressure  unless the engraving and relief is very deep / which its not . Even in the cases of those you see with heavy relief .
  Re shaping it a little wont hurt either . But you have to be careful to  re shape it as evenly as you can . Other wise the barrel will act just as any steel will . IE it will draw and contract with temperature changes . . so lets say you get one side of the barrel significantly  thinner then the other . . What will happen is the POIU will start to drift as the barrel warms .

Another issue is that if you get say a swamped barrel  or O to R   barrel and cut it down . You can end up with something simply Fugly .
Also remember  just because a barrel is long , it doesn’t mean its heavy . For that mater that the rifle will be heavy .
 On that same note , a heavy rifle that’s well balanced  is still a lot nicer to carry then a poorly balanced  light rifle .
 My suggestion to you is to get the barrel profile in the length that you want . If GM doesn’t carry it , then go somewhere else