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Daryl,

I did use Pete's movie for information. Mostly, to make sure that the barrel smiths didn't have some amazing ability to work fast. They were certainly good at their work. But, the amount of work that they were able to accomplish in each forging session at the anvil was pretty much standard fair for blacksmithing.

Another time consuming thing that any blacksmith must allow for, is the time required to bring the steel to forging heat. It just takes a certain amount of time to reheat the metal in the forge after each session of hammering on the anvil. I made a calculation for the average amount of reheating time required, based on my experience with the type of forge being used in the movie, the tools that the smiths were using and the mass of the barrel being welded in the movie. This reheating time calculation, I multiplied by the number of heats that I calculated would be required to weld a barrel tube.



Tom,

I agree with you!! Though it didn't show it in the movie, I expect that the smiths worked on more than one barrel at a time.

Did anyone else do the math on the 2,000 barrel makers producing 600,000 barrels in a year?

I expect that the barrel smiths worked at least 12 hour days (probably more like 14 to 16). They probably also worked six day weeks.

12 hours x 6 days = 72 hours
72 hours x 52 weeks = 3,744 hours
3,744 hours x 2,000 men = 7,488,000 man hours
7,488,000 man hours divided by 600,000 barrels = 12.48 hours per barrel

Has anyone considered how many of the barrels were pistol? I'd say 1/3 possibly 1/2 as a wild guess. Is the total fluid steel & pattern welded? Also, tubes were supplied in different states so how many man hours for a rough bored tubes vs. a finished one? For a time, I'd say the worked 7 days a week and the proofhouse was also open 7 days a week.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Consider that two to three men would compose a team so we don't have 2,000 individual teams but half or less. Also, I've heard nothing of the use of trip hammers (machine made) in barrel making factories to increase efficiency.

Joe,
W.W. Greener mentions in "The Gun and Its Development", that powered machinery was used in Birmingham for damascus barrel work. He states that tilt-hammers were used for forging. I cannot imagine that there were no Belgian smiths using trip-hammers.



Raimey,
I have not seen a word written about the forging of tubes specifically for pistol barrels. Again in "The Gun and Its Development", Greener wrote one sentence about octagon barrels being forged on a properly shaped anvil and rifle barrels being welded on smaller mandrels. Pistol barrel forging would be virtually the same as forging of a rifle barrel. I would be very interested in knowing of any other documentation concerning the forging of rifle and pistol barrels.

Not having found much information on the subject, I have my own speculations on the source of pistol barrels. In short; I believe they were forged from tubes that were welded for shotgun barrels. Certainly there were a number of shotgun tube forgings that had a flaw in them, making them unsuitable for producing a long barrel. Some portion of these tubes would have been sound enough to re-forge into shorter barrels.

My own work with forging damascus pistol barrels, convinces me that forging a large bore tube down to a smaller caliber can easily be done. The entire subject of forging small bore tubes, including small gauge shotgun tubes, is something that I am keenly interested in. Lacking information, I have my own wild speculation about the process, but no sound historical information. Rather than hijack Drew's thread, I would entertain a separate discussion on this topic.

It is interesting Steve, and I always appreciate your comments.

A point I think worth considering is, if a shotgun tube has been welded and formed to show a correct finished pattern, wouldn't reforging to some smaller diameter distort the pattern.

Also, if the correct pattern is uncovered in the center of the material, to some extent the better rifled barrel makers might have intentionally welded them up differently than a shotgun tube to account for greater wall thickness and appearance. Only thoughts and sorry Doc Drew.

CARRY ON GENTLEMEN!

I've avoided any effort to research pattern welded rifle and pistol barrels, but for your interest

Charles Daly (Sauer) Drilling Diamond Regent Grade. Barrels marked "Fine Damascus."





It is my sense that the transition from pattern welded rifled tubes to Bessemer/Decarbonized/Plain Steel/'Rolled (Bessemer) Steel' and eventually to fluid steel occurred much earlier than it did in shotguns, and was driven by improvements in military weapons

Fire-Arms Manufacture 1880 U.S. Department of Interior, Census Office
"The earliest use of decarbonized steel or gun-barrels is generally credited to the Remingtons, who made steel barrels for North & Savage, of Middletown, Connecticut, and for the Ames Manufacturing company, of Chicopee, Massachusetts, as early as 1846. It is also stated that some time about 1848 Thomas Warner, a the Whitneyville works, incurred so much loss in the skelp-welding of iron barrels that he voluntarily substituted steel drilled barrels in his contract, making them of decarbonized steel, which was believed by him to be a novel expedient. The use of soft cast-steel was begun at Harper's Ferry about 1849. After 1873, all small-arms barrels turned out at the national armory at Springfield were made of decarbonized steel(a barrel of which will endure twice as heavy a charge as a wrought-iron barrel), Bessemer steel being used until 1878, and afterward Siemens-Martin steel."

I've only seen Damas Moire' on pistols and rifles



"Watered Silk"



2 c. early 1800s percussion pistols





c. 1844 Valentin Funk & Sohne

I just scanned thru the above for now, but I too think that all tubes were similar to scattergun gun tubes, including solid projectile/rifled tubes and then their final state was destined by the application. Mostly because I have not see a rifled pattern welded tube price list. Sometime around 1900 - 1902, there were 150k braces or sets of pattern welded tubes with the bulk in rough form going to the U.S. of A. Typically single tube exports were 1/2 that of sets. The cost of the tube was a dollar to a dollar & quarter. Total production for those years were approximately 600k as you state but pistol tubes were also included. At this time there were in excess of 50k workmen, workwomen & work-children. Around 1907 info suggest that the American market was strongly shifting to fluid steel.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Absolutely! While I agree with the calculations of man hours per rough tube for the barrel smiths, that would only be a fraction of the total time involved in the production of a finished set of Damascus barrels. And that remains the source of my amazement that these guns were made affordable to the average shooter of the time. Of course, final boring, reaming, chambering, striking, soldering, etc. would be virtually the same for fluid steel tubes. But for Damascus production, we would also have to factor in the hours of apprenctices and laborers who fired and tended the forges, plus a myriad of other support tasks, also going back to the man hours of the early rolling mills which supplied the rods and ribbands.

Steve's comment about forging good sections of rejected shotgun tubes down into smaller bore pistol tubes makes me wonder if some mill operator or smith wasn't the inventive mind responsible for using specially ground rolls in a mill to accomplish this task. The process of piercing a heated billet and rolling it to finished O.D. and I.D over a mandrel bar to make seamless pipe and tube goes back to the 1800's. It seems that a lot of that technology could have had its' roots years earlier in the gun production trade.

As always, a fascinating subject and a reminder of the ingenuity of some men.

Keith and ellenbr, that 50k number may be the total number of all Belgian trade workers supporting the industry at the time. The document referenced on Doc Drew's site says of that number, about 2k were damascus barrel makers. But, agreed, it would seem that only rough tubes come out of the shops.