The Broken Rifle
Copyright© 2024 by Old Man with a Pen
Chapter 8
Never kid yourself. There is a certain amount of magic involved in metal-working. Sure there are scientific advances ... but the rifle barrels of Hawken were either hand forged around a form or bought premade from Remington. Remington sold a lot of barrels. Deep hole drilling wasn’t invented yet and rifiling was just scratches not even a millimeter deep.
The best homebrewed barrels were hammered from a block of iron with a factory hole in it. Put a steel rod in the orange/yellow heated block and beat it with a hammer ... it’ll stretch and form around the rod. That’s if you’re gonna do your own. Damascus barrels are ok for shotgun tubes but won’t stand the pressures of a tight fitting round ball. Welding barrels with wasps nest is kinda iffy.
The book Foxfire tells of barrels so soft a guy could use a drawknife for the flats.
Just collecting the ‘prills’ (round balls of metal small enough to pinch between ones fingers) requires several technologies. (And any sufficiently advanced technology as to be out of the understanding of the common man is perceived as magic or witchcraft.)
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