Almost forgot I had this.
From
Fire-Arms Manufacture 1880. U.S. Department of Interior, Census Office.
It ought to be stated that while military barrels are, in this country, generally rolled down upon mandrels, the barrels of sporting guns are drilled full length, as is the practice at the Winchester armory and at Colt's armory. It is significant that at Enfield the English method of barrel rolling, so generally introduced into this country, and the present practice at the United States armory and other large works, has been abandoned for the former and more expensive method of drilling the barrels full length. This is the method also approved in the Prussian armories...
Barrels were first forged by hand, but in 1817 the method of welding them under a trip-hammer was patented by Asa Waters, of Millbury, Massachusetts....The practice of welding barrels under trip-hammers, instead of by hand, was not introduced at Harper's Ferry until 1836.
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 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.
Pete
