Author Topic: How to Build a Rifling Machine.......A to Z (Read 67056 times)

seacoastartillery · « **on:** January 05, 2007, 07:51:01 AM »

First of all, Happy New Year from Mike and Tracy who are Seacoast Artillery Company. We have been very, very busy lately getting our display ready for the large Las Vegas Antique, Sporting Arms and Knifemaker's Show which is this weekend, Jan. 5,6,and 7 of 2007. Mike is there, answering questions, and I am stuck here in Colorado Shoveling Snow!

Mike and I sincerely hope that maybe one or two of you members or guests decide to go for it and actually build a rifling machine which can produce accurate rifled cannon tubes. Be forewarned, however, that this project is a long, sometimes frustrating, and toward the end, very difficult one. Our purpose in releasing this information is to promote SAFE and ACCURATE small cannon shooting. We encourage anyone really interested in this topic to OBTAIN ALL THE INFO YOU CAN FIND ON THE SUBJECT INCLUDING THE INFO YOU MUST PAY FOR. We are NOT selling any information here. Others are, and we encourage you to buy their stuff. We did, and we used elements of everything we could find to build our machine. The reason you need ALL OF THIS INFORMATION is that this is the only way to increase your options. After all, your application may demand a slightly different or modified machine from the one that you learn about from a single source.

Another warning: if you expect to build a rifling machine in a few weekends or if you expect to build one, based on our information, capable of satisfying big commercial contracts, forget it. It ain't gonna happen. Our machine is a small, hand-driven, special design intended to do onesey-twoseys only.

If it's O.K. with the moderators, we would like to allow Two (2) Weeks for the membership to send their questions to this thread. Mike and I will check it every day and incorporate the question and answer into the Step By Step which will start to appear at the end of that time. The Step by Step will be divided into Three Sections. the FIRST will be an explanation of how to make a sturdy, rigid, Chassis including the sine bar, the carriage, the rack and the parallel ways upon which the carriage rides. The SECOND section will show how we built the drive mechanism which moves the rifling head into and out of the cannon tube. The THIRD will be the explanation of how the rifling head is built and YES, don't worry, all the angles on the cutter will be detailed and discussed. Please remember that these angles depend on YOUR application and are definitely NOT GENERIC. Lots and lots of experiments on your part will be NECESSARY for you to get a proper, smooth-cutting tool.

So, please send your questions about any aspect of this topic which interests you on this thread only please. The answers will not be instant; the only logical way to present this material is to incorporate them into the Step by Step. We will attempt to credit each member's question within the format of the Step by Step. Don't get torqued if we forget to include yours. A gentle reminder via email would be appreciated. This is a very complex subject and there are about a thousand details to think about as we create the Step by Step instruction. AFTER the Step by Step is presented, we will entertain any follow-up questions in the normal manner.

That's about it. Send those questions in. Answers coming in APPROX. two weeks.

Mike and Tracy
Seacoast Artillery Company, Inc.

moose53 · « **Reply #1 on:** January 05, 2007, 09:40:23 AM »

With the Black Powder and now the Rifling Machine this is becoming quite the information site

rifleshooter2 · « **Reply #2 on:** January 05, 2007, 09:58:31 AM »

Thank You I can't wait to read this thread.

Andy

gimlet · « **Reply #3 on:** January 05, 2007, 05:54:11 PM »

Mike & Tracy, Sure nice of you to do this. I have one question for now (I'll probly have a lot more later). You would probably cover this anyhow, but I'm curious about twist rates. I think they would get slower as the bore gets bigger, but don't really know. Hope to find out in the next few weeks. thanks, Butch

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #4 on:** January 06, 2007, 02:30:53 AM »

Mike & Tracy - You've started something!

Gimlet - WELCOME to the board! We'd love to see what you shoot (or are planning).

seacoastartillery · « **Reply #5 on:** January 06, 2007, 07:45:04 AM »

We certainly hope so, Tim. Gimlet, your question will be the very first one answered. Mike and I really hope that someone will take up the challenge of a project like this and actually see it through to the finish. I can assure you that shooting your first successful 100 yard target is a thrill that you will never forget!!

Keep those questions coming! We will provide detailed answers for every single one. The formula for calculating the answer to the following question will be provided.
I want to make a 1" bore rifled tube. I want to shoot 5 oz. cylindrical projectiles. What range of rifling twists can I use to stabilize my projectiles?

Tracy

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #6 on:** January 06, 2007, 10:19:01 AM »

Quote from: seacoastartillery on January 06, 2007, 07:45:04 AM

...
Keep those questions coming! We will provide detailed answers for every single one. The formula for calculating the answer to the following question will be provided.
I want to make a 1" bore rifled tube. I want to shoot 5 oz. cylindrical projectiles. What range of rifling twists can I use to stabilize my projectiles?
...

Let me guess, would this have something to do with the Greenhill formula?

seacoastartillery · « **Reply #7 on:** January 06, 2007, 10:48:06 AM »

HEY! Whatchu triun to do, Steal my Thunder?? Did living in Montana and breathing all that fresh air make you smart or have you always been that way?

Pulling your leg, Tim, and of course you are absolutely correct. The next thing you know someone will call us and ask, "Are you guys nuts or what? Aren't you giving away the family farm here?" Well, no, we are not crazy, because anything extra you can do to create good will and also increase the "buzz" about your topic or product, is all to the good. In our initial post on this topic we encouraged anyone interested to go out and buy all the information you can find on this subject. This is really good advice; you need multiple points of view on this complex subject.

We consider every question to be important. The only dumb question is the one not asked.

Will Bison · « **Reply #8 on:** January 06, 2007, 11:05:55 AM »

I'm interested because the rifled gun I have has too many lands and grooves and turns way too fast. I knew this when I got the barrel but it looks good.

Anyway, looking forward to the discussion.

Bill

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #9 on:** January 06, 2007, 02:43:40 PM »

Quote from: seacoastartillery on January 06, 2007, 10:48:06 AM

HEY! Whatchu triun to do, Steal my Thunder?? Did living in Montana and breathing all that fresh air make you smart or have you always been that way?

Pulling your leg, Tim, and of course you are absolutely correct. The next thing you know someone will call us and ask, "Are you guys nuts or what? Aren't you giving away the family farm here?" Well, no, we are not crazy, because anything extra you can do to create good will and also increase the "buzz" about your topic or product, is all to the good. In our initial post on this topic we encouraged anyone interested to go out and buy all the information you can find on this subject. This is really good advice; you need multiple points of view on this complex subject.
...

Steal your thunder - certainly not! This it the closest application to which it could be applied from the original purpose! It is worthy of a thread all of it's own as well - but here is the best place and reason to introduce it and explore it's principles. It is loosely applied to the relm of modern rifles - but the bullet shape for which it was designed is perhaps much closer in size and shape to our chosen toys.

I wholeheartedly agree with you in principle of educating others to the principles by which we produce products. I used to give to the local high schools (to their surprize) all the content I taught in AutoCAD (CAD drafting and design). By making the incoming students better it kept me on my toes to offer still more and of higher quality - the students benefited.

Montana? No, that was DD. I grew up in Iowa - miles and miles of rolling hills covered with a sea of corn - great beef and hogs (that sometimes would bring a tear to your eyes). Yes, I've always been this way.

Don Krag · « **Reply #10 on:** January 07, 2007, 09:58:18 AM »

Most questions I have will probably be answered by the pics and such you'll have. Here's a few others:

What's the optimum (if any) number of lands/grooves for rifling for the different bores (.750 - 3" range)? How deep do they need to be cut?

Does rifling change the windage needed for a specific projectile?

How do cut rifling compare to button rifling on the larger bore guns?

seacoastartillery · « **Reply #11 on:** January 07, 2007, 11:38:27 AM »

Will Bison posed an interesting situation. Can a rifled cannon tube have too many grooves or have a twist that is too fast? The progression from just a few grooves in early artillery tubes to a multitude of them in modern artillery tubes, the ones that have not gone full circle back to a smooth-bore configuration, suggests one-half of the answer. The other half of the answer is in our artillery library somewhere. We will find it. Our thanks to Don Krag for some very good questions. Also, he is right, there will be quite a few pictures to help explain various construction details. Remember too, that we do NOT have complete drawings for sale. We are not selling anything here. The fact is that we just don't have any; we have sketches used in our shop to build our machine and they were created as we went along. We will share a bunch of those which detail the close tolerance areas.

Please know this; we are not ordinance engineers. If we can provide a good solid answer to your more technical questions, we will. However if we can't, we will tell you that also. You need facts here, not B.S. We built our machine over an 18 month period, not full time, but it was full time on the rifling head alone for over a month!
We used empirical results to prove out designs that we purchased or learned of through internet research. We also tested a few original ideas as well. We didn't waste too much time on scientific theory. The thought of dealing with three variables at the same time doesn't sound like a good idea to us. In our experiments we limited ourselves to one variable at a time. It may be slower, but we believe the results on the 100 yard targets we shot justified our methods.

The machine we will be explaining is designed to cut ACCURATE grooves in a GUNDRILLED and REAMED, STRAIGHT, black powder, muzzle-loading, cannon tube either through hole or blind hole and straight twist or gain twist. The bore size range and length we built it to handle without any modification is 1/2" to 2 1/2" Dia. X 54" Long.

Keep those questions coming. Thanks, Tracy

reddog · « **Reply #12 on:** January 07, 2007, 12:08:15 PM »

I hate to be A pessimist but for A 1" bore cannon 15,000$ is A lot of money, not everyone on this board can afford that kind of money!! I bet it only cost 1000$ in Matierial to build!!

seacoastartillery · « **Reply #13 on:** January 07, 2007, 12:27:06 PM »

Reddog, you're a little off topic here, but we will give you an answer anyway.

1. We do not make our museum guns for guys like Mike and I, machinists and woodworkers.

2. We do make them for Serious Collectors, Investors, and Museums.

3. NEVER look a gift horse in the mouth.

Bye the way, you are very astute with your estimation on material costs. It comes in right at $1,100.

Best regards,

Tracy

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #14 on:** January 07, 2007, 12:28:46 PM »

Aside from the question of RATE of TWIST, questions that accompany the question of the number of grooves/lands are those of WIDTH of lands and grooves, DEPTH of grooves and SHAPE of same.

Having talked with rifle barrel manufacturers, I'm aware of the WEAR on the rifling is primarily on ONE side. Shape affects this to some extent, and also influences cleaning.

guardsgunner · « **Reply #15 on:** January 07, 2007, 01:43:23 PM »

Will Bison wrote.

I'm interested because the rifled gun I have has too many lands and grooves and turns way too fast.

Will, how many grooves do you have and what is the rate of twist? In the 1850's ; Whitworth work on 1.5" guns with a rate of twist as fast as 1 in 10". My gun has 16 grooves of equal width and a rate of 1 in 60. No stripping problem with 3 oz Fg in a 1.5".

reddog · « **Reply #16 on:** January 07, 2007, 01:56:45 PM »

How can I be off topic when we are talking about the cannon you sell?

GGaskill · « **Reply #17 on:** January 07, 2007, 04:36:31 PM »

How can I be off topic when we are talking about the cannon you sell?

Because this thread is called "How to Build a Rifling Machine.......A to Z" ?

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #18 on:** January 07, 2007, 04:43:02 PM »

Quote from: reddog on January 07, 2007, 01:56:45 PM

How can I be off topic when we are talking about the cannon you sell?

It's a LITTLE off topic. A little off topic is OK!

LET ME ADD, (in light of DD's remarks below) - there's a big difference between being off-topic for the FORUM and off-topic in a particular thread. WE often wander quite a bit in the threads - which causes brain cramps later in life looking for where someone said something regarding that ....

Continue to march.

Double D · « **Reply #19 on:** January 07, 2007, 04:46:50 PM »

Quote from: reddog on January 07, 2007, 01:56:45 PM

How can I be off topic when we are talking about the cannon you sell?

Reddog, Tracy is not talkiing about the cannon he sells, he is talking about how to build a rifling machine, that is the topic.

I do think you are indirectly on topic with your question. If you stick with the thread and follows what's going I think you will see how an $1100 pile a of wood and metal is turned into a $15,000 work of art. You will see the tremendous amout of work that goes into building a model such as this. So be patient and follow along. When Tracy is completely through with the description of how they build this gun, then I think you should ask your guestion again if you still don't see it.

Continue please Tracy...

seacoastartillery · « **Reply #20 on:** January 08, 2007, 06:22:43 AM »

Thanks guys. This weekend I completed the outline, wrote the intro, did some research in our small library and started to take the overall view photos, including a few from the top of a step ladder in order to get a good "top view". The reason Mike and I encourage you to send in specific questions about building a rifling machine is so we can emphasize those features on our machine which help to answer each specific question.

Keep them coming! Thanks, Mike & Tracy

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #21 on:** January 08, 2007, 07:02:05 AM »

I know I'm getting ahead, but since I've got an extra lathe, wouldn't that be a likely candidate for a rifling machine?

Don Krag · « **Reply #22 on:** January 08, 2007, 08:38:44 AM »

A detailed section on alignment procedures would be nice. I've dealt with a lot of scientific instruments and they always seem to either gloss over that section, or cram six steps into one! I'd imagine with a rifling machine there's quite a bit of checking and re-checking done in a specific order.

Looking over your website already gave me some ideas quite a bit different from what I was originally thinking. Nice site BTW, especially the photo section!

seacoastartillery · « **Reply #23 on:** January 08, 2007, 10:16:00 AM »

Tim and Don, you guys are so "on the mark", I'm going to sit back and let you fill in gaps in my outline that I didn't even know existed. Thank you very much. Since Don's suggestion will require us to pull up some of our combined 56 years of inspection experience, he's going to have to wait a bit. Tim's question, on the other hand, is so elemental, so basic, and will probably save him more than half the cost of the average home-built machine, it begs an answer right now. YES, emphatically yes. Mike and I had this same thought three years ago when we started exploring this idea of building a rifling machine. The local used machinery dealers did not have an old lathe in the right size at that time, so we headed to our local scrap yard to look for undamaged U-channel and steel plates.

Two main advantages of using a lathe bed, besides the possible cost savings, are that your alignment issues are about 90 % solved and also you do not have to make legs or find a bench to sit your machine on. Depending on the size of your lathe, you might have to build the carriage upward so that the back end of your pinion gear shaft can go into the headstock hole. Neither mike nor I have ever seen this configuration, but we would be willing to bet that there are some out there.

Thanks! We will check in tomorrow. Mike and Tracy

Will Bison · « **Reply #24 on:** January 08, 2007, 11:35:25 AM »

Guardsgunner;

My tube is a section Jap 47m/m anti air/tank gun. I think 16 or 18 L/G, very shallow and twist is about 8 feet. The original gun shot a projo of about 5 lbs at 2,800 fps.

My 20 oz lead ball exits at about 750 fps. It is almost impossible to get a patched ball down a 47 m/m bore so I load it like a smooth bore. Bore length is 28 inches.

I think I would like to do a rebore/rerifle with perhaps 4 L/G at greater depth and slower twist to accomodate a short lead bolt.

Bill

guardsgunner · « **Reply #25 on:** January 08, 2007, 04:41:42 PM »

Will Bison,
Have you considered using a Read type projectile ( civilwarartillery.com )with a anealed brass cup on the base? Your twist is right on for civil war projectiles. There are many which expand on discharge and are mostly bore riders. these will greatly improve accuracy.
your gun isn't much differnt than my. Try an elongated projectile before you even think about rerifleing.

Powder keg · « **Reply #26 on:** January 08, 2007, 06:36:49 PM »

I'm excited about this topic. I've never done any rifling, but would like to. You answered my first question. I was curious if you could rifil a blind hole. It will be interesting to see good photos and descriptions of the cutter. About how long does it take to cut the rifling?

As a machinist and builder I can appreciate the amount of time you have into your cannons. Not only is there time in the actual building. But the planning and research. To get everything just right. They are under priced. Pretty much all the cannon builders here are under priced. People complain if the prices are high. Even on quality pieces like these. If they are low, people want to know what is wrong with it, and complain that the quality should have been better. It is hard to make everyone happy. You at Seacoast Artillery should be very proud of the work you are doing! Keep it up!

Wes

seacoastartillery · « **Reply #27 on:** January 08, 2007, 08:06:55 PM »

Thank you Wes. Praise from a machinist of your experience is much appreciated. It takes between 5 and 6 hours to get all nine grooves on the scale 100 Pdr. Parrott Rifle to the finished depth of .0167". Mike and I take turns about every 45 minutes. Running that hand wheel round and round turns your arm to rubber! The hook takes about a tenth and 50 millionths off for each stroke. Blind hole work is definitely trickier, but not that much harder to accomplish once you get a special head made which combines the standard tool advance with a "waterfall cut actuator". We broke lots of carefully made hook cutters figuring out how to make the cutter penetrate the barrel steel just prior to the stroke. That was an expensive and very painful month of 12 to 14 hour days before we solved that problem!!

A special Thank You from Mike who is stuck half way between Las Vegas and Denver waiting for all the ice and blowing snow to subside.

jeeper1 · « **Reply #28 on:** January 08, 2007, 09:14:32 PM »

Quote

stuck half way between Las Vegas and Denver

Green River, Utah?

Double D · « **Reply #29 on:** January 09, 2007, 03:54:14 AM »

Quote from: Powder keg on January 08, 2007, 06:36:49 PM

I'm excited about this topic. I've never done any rifling, but would like to. You answered my first question. I was curious if you could rifil a blind hole. It will be interesting to see good photos and descriptions of the cutter. About how long does it take to cut the rifling?

As a machinist and builder I can appreciate the amount of time you have into your cannons. Not only is there time in the actual building. But the planning and research. To get everything just right. They are under priced. Pretty much all the cannon builders here are under priced. People complain if the prices are high. Even on quality pieces like these. If they are low, people want to know what is wrong with it, and complain that the quality should have been better. It is hard to make everyone happy. You at Seacoast Artillery should be very proud of the work you are doing! Keep it up!

Wes

Wes, out of the kindness of my heart, to help a young guy out, so you have a test bed, feel free to use my Parrot Rifle Barrel to learn how to rifle, gratis no charge, glad help out, think nothing of my generosity....