Historically, sleeving after being 'invented' in the 50's was used by certain gun manufacturers as a way of keeping men working when there were few new gun orders. Some of these sleeving jobs were really badly done: barrel sets with the handling of scaffolding tubes, very visible joints et al. Of course there was some very good work as well but these jobs were lost in 'noise' of the poor work and the value of sleeved guns tumbled, partly due to the influence of the major gunmakers who did everything they could to denigrate the process, having lost a large amount of work in rebarrelling.
In the 90's Bob Ladbrook started working on TIG jointing the barrel tubes into the breech block and suddenly one had a potentially invisible joint and a much better looking job. There was much wringing of hands over concerns about brittle fractures but with judicious normalisation of the barrel set after welding and before striking up, these fear were proven misplaced.
When TIG 're-sleeving' barrel sets to lose the joint, I found that in poorly done sleeving, knurling of the new tube to improve the fit in the breech block (rather than hand finishing it for a perfect press fit) was commonplace and this can make re-using the old sleeving tubes impossible for a good fit.
The old complaint that sleeving 'destroys the balance' is patently untrue if the new barrels are profiled and thicknessed correctly. However, as the original barrel set got lighter through lapping or striking off, the gun will likely have been re-balanced and this must now be done again to restore the original balance to the complete gun by adding weight to the stock etc.
Having said all this, the market still considers a sleeved gun to be considerably less valuable than even one with thin and dangerous original barrels. I sort of understand were the collector mentality comes from but for practical use, a sleeved gun CAN BE every bit as good as the original gun. A lot of the guns I sell are sleeved and I have yet to have anybody complain about their usability.
And a very happy Christmas to you all.
(And my wife is wondering what the hell I am doing on Christmas morning at the breakfast table, ho, ho, ho!)
Last edited by Toby Barclay; 12/25/19 01:11 PM.
