Odd Thought - Make my own Barrel Bands?

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dakota.potts

New member
I took my Mosin Nagant stock off at one point to replace it with a Boyd's Laminate. I kept the original stock and I'm heavily considering refinishing it with pine tar for a nice contrasting finish.

Of course, to get the Boyd's stock off I had to remove the barrel bands and I got a little frustrated so I ended up dremeling them off. So now I have to get new ones.

I had a strange thought that I could maybe try forming some of my own. I don't have a lot of tooling so I'm not confident I could work with steel, but I've seen that some rifles such as the Enfield incorporated a brass barrel band. I've worked with brass before and know I can form it with a hammer fairly easily. Brass might be a nice classic look also.

If I were to consider doing so, what would be the best source material to work from? I assume something like rods versus layered sheets. Also, what's the best method for attaching it? I know that brass doesn't necessarily have the elasticity of steel so I'm not sure I can rely on spring tension, rather I would have to figure a method of peening, pinning, screwing, or potentially even brazing the band to itself.

What would be the proper method for forming the band? It doesn't seem like just hammering it into the newly refinished stock would be the best thing for the finish.

Anybody tried anything like this? Maybe classic long rifle/musket makers?

The rifle isn't supposed to be a war rifle (although it will always be ready for that), it's really just something to keep in the safe and shoot once in a while. It might go hunting with me a couple times this year. I bought it to practice gunsmithing on so I'm not too worried about historical accuracy or anything like that.
 
M-N barrel bands are flat steel stock bent to shape by cold forming. It should be relatively easy to cut and shape any material of approximately the right thickness, but hot shaping might be easier in a home shop. But why? Those bands can be bought so cheaply that making them would be pointless. It would be like setting up to make steel balls in order to produce a ball pen.

Jim
 
Just to have a project to do. I'm a gunsmithing student but I just started my general education classes so I'm 2 semesters away from even touching a file :D

I'm really liking the idea of a brass barrel band with the pine tar finish, and a couple scraps of brass should be cheap enough that I'm really considering trying it
 
Here is a 7x57 on a 7.7 Arisaka action. It is in a 6.5 Arisaka stock and hand guard. The complete barrel band (w/swivel) is aluminum. Everything I could safely make of aluminum and titanium is made of those materials. Even the wood screws are aluminum. It has seen some rough use and the bake on paint is wearing off the aluminum at places.

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Thank you for sharing, gunplummer. I believe I know of your reputation as a gunsmith from other boards such as the AKFiles if I'm not mistaken.

Would you mind sharing some of how you did that?
 
Never heard of the AKfiles. The front band is milled from solid aluminum. When you make something you cannot hold in a vise, you need extra. If you want a 1" wide band start with a block about 2" long, or longer. Put the excess length down in the vise and then you have a good grip on the part. Make sure you mill deep enough so you have room to saw or use a slitting saw to cut your finished piece off. This works well for many odd shaped parts. Basically, it will look like a statue on a pedestal before you cut it off. If you are going to use brass, I would make a block with a mandrel milled on top that is the form of the inside of your barrel band. That way you have something to use to bend your band around when heating. You may want to start with steel. Brass can be hard to work with sometimes.
 
Barrel bands wouldn't be hard to make. However, I'd get surplus bands and then fit them onto the new stock instead of modifying the bands. That's the way it is generally done.
 
I think the object here is to learn and improve skill level, not find the cheapest way out. The first Russian I owned (Long Hex Receiver Finnish) had barrel bands with screws that turned CC to tighten the bands.
 
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