doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Chatter wile tapering a barrel

Ok, I make quite a few barrels here in the shop, Round, Octagon, 1/ 2 Round etc, the barrels I hate the most are tapered round, for one simple reason chatter.

I’m looking for a way to cut out the chatter when tapering round barrels in a lathe. The folks that have done this probably know what I’m talking about. When you put a 26 or 30 inch BBL between centers, you get to the center of the barrel and it acts like a wet noodle. Now this is a semi production environment, time is money.

Standard Follower rest won't work, barrel is tapered.

Yes I’ve messed with Speeds, feeds, HSS and Carbide, different nose radius on tools, and etc….

I know the "big boys" grind their barrels, and I'm considering this, I've got the grinder..not sure that I want to dedicate one of my lathes to this.

I’m thinking another solution to this problem is a spring loaded or hydraulic follower rest. Has anyone built one of these????

Mike Hunter
Hunter Restorations

I modified my steady rest using sealed roller bearings. I have tried just about everything else as well and this has worked the best.
Dave

Dave

Yes I have rollers on my steady also, but the problem is when using a conventional follower rest on a tapered part, the follower rest will actually push the barrel into the cutter and not follow the taper. That make sense?

Mike many years ago there used to be a old custom gun maker in Denver (charlie Durham)He had me modify a follow rest with small sealed bearings.running Horz with the barrel. And adjustabel coil spring pressure. What a JOB.! but he said it worked super.?? Whitey

Ask John Taylor at the ASSRA site. He's doing a tapered round barrel for my #1 Rolling Block project right now. I know he uses a rest, but not sure how he overcomes the chatter mentioned. Mine will get .010" taper over the 32" length.

Mike, I have the same problem and haven't had any better luck than you. When I was at Trinidad we had a dedicated 'taper' lathe that had a spring-loaded roller follower mounted on the saddle on the back side of the tool post and it did help, but didn't completely solve the problem. The spring tension was quite high, I recall. A fellow on another forum recently reminded me about a u-shaped tool holder/tool system that would also add springiness to the cutting edge itself, and then (DUH!) I remembered reading about it one of the Machinery manuals. I've considered using my steady-rest to choke up on the length but that would leave a transition area in the middle that would be difficult to hide. I don't do nearly as many barrels as you so it's not an earthshaking issue with me but it sure is a PITA.
Good luck and regards, Joe

use maple wood and oil with hand held stick off saddel to kill chatter harmonics-----pressure is right when it shuts up.

Mike
I always use homemade tracer attachment. After getting to the halfway point i put on a center rest. My tracer has a ball bearing that runs along side of the pattern bbl. Here i am turning a 20 gauge rifled barrel with the original 16 gauge barrels in the back. the 20 gauge bbls will go on the 16 gauge and use the same forarm.
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