Old barrel

T

tinker2

New member
I acquired a old Muzzleloading barrel out of pile of junk at a gun show:)

As I walked out with it I had a number of people stop me and want to buy this from me, they actually got quite unpleasant with me??:(

It is just a old rusty barrel, I may cut it up for something. It’s a old rusty barrel. Am I missing something? :confused:

It is Loaded.
Octagon barrel 34 3/4 long to the snail type percussion breach plug. Tapered from 1 inch to 7/8. Six groove rifling .50 caliber? Wide lands and narrow grooves. Very long dovetail for a missing rear sight. I could post a picture if it would make any difference.

It’s a old rusty barrel, what am I missing? I don’t want to cut up a piece of history that maybe I should not.



Thanks
Tinker2
 
Ok, I took some pictures, this is just a old rusty barrel right?

Barrel
ORBBAR.jpg


Broken tang.
ORBTANG.jpg


Snail.
ORBSNA.jpg


Rear sight dovetail.
ORBSIG1B.jpg


Bore.
ORBBOR3B.jpg


This is a rusty barrel? It’s for sure pitted. I will try to de-rust it when the weather gets better and look for any marking on it but unless it’s marked Daniel Boone or the likes is it worth doing any thing with? what would you do with it?

When I got it, my thought was maybe to cut it into pistol barrels and bore them out smooth.
I got it because it was a octagon bar with a hole through it.

I don’t have any real plans for it and I am open to your ideas.
I don’t want to cut up a piece of history that maybe I should not.



Thanks
Tinker2
 
Unless someone spotted it as a barrel off of and original Hawken, I don't see that there is a big deal. It's old but still a percussion and a Rock-Crusher would draw more attention. I do now a fella that made a lamp out of an old side lock but it had a stock on it. I also know a knife maker that uses old Damascus barrels and makes knives out of them. It's vintage but that's about it .. :confused:


Be Safe !!!
 
tinker - if you ever get an answer for your question, I'd sure like to hear it! :D Like you, I've picked up old barrels over the years. Several I have bored out to smoothbore. I bought them when I could get them cheap - 2 to 10 dollars - then all of a sudden, they became valuable? Give me a break. Unless, like the one fella said, it is an original Hawkin barrel or something like that - it is just what you describe it as - a rusted piece of iron. Yes, they can be bored out, re-rifled or a rifled liner put in - but, if it is rusted and pitted badly, is it really worth anything? I guess it is up to the person that wants it for whatever reason. I had accumulated a number of them and finally sold most of them on eBay about 5 years ago - to my amazement, they brought decent money and I made some good profit off of them. I have a couple left and will probably do what you are talking about - cut them down, bore them out and either leave them smoothbore or put a rifled liner in them. But, my time and materials are worth something so am I going to save $ doing it over just buying a new made barrel - probably not. Most of these barrels you run across are left over from guns that were parted out or they are the sole survivor of what was once a firearm. I don't find a great quantity of original muzzleloaders that are missing just the barrel and if you did, you might hunt a long time to find a barrel that would fit in the channel and work proportion wise. So go figure . . . . You do have a nice tapered barrel there that with some MAJOR re-work, could be a good barrel - but again, a lot of hours, work and sweat. The majority of truly old, original barrels have breechplugs with very coarse threads - oftentimes rusted, pitted, etc. and it can require a lot of machining and possibly cutting off the breech and re-breeching with a new breechplug (if there is enough barrel wall thickness to do it). I half imagine that a lot of people who view these old barrels as "valuable antiques", buy 'em and take them home and they end up collecting dust somewhere. I once had an original 1816 musket barrel that had been reworked at an arsenal - rifled, rebreeched to percussion and a long range sight installed. It had been through a fire and was heat warped in two places. I sold the long range sight separately and at a gun show, sold the barrel to a guy who went bananas over it - he was going to build a musket around the barrel to shoot NSSA. For a wall-hanger, it would have worked O.K. - but, to attempt to use it as a shooter? I tried to discourage him but he knew more about it than anybody else. When he finally asked me what I wanted for it, I threw out a price of what a mint original barrel just like it would go for. I thought he'd turn on his heels and walk away - he didn't - he shelled out the cash for it and thought he had something nobody else did. I pointed out everything that was wrong with it, took the breechplug out and let him look down the barrel and see the obvious warps and it still did nothing to prevent him from wanting it. I finally just figured that the customer is always right and sold it to him. I used to shoot NSSA but I never heard of an event for muskets that would shoot around corners. I often wondered if he got his "dream gun" built around it or if it is serving somewhere as a fence post for which it was better suited.

Good luck with your barrel and whatever you do with it, I hope you'll let us know how it worked out! Thanks! bedbug :)
 
If it was an old handmade rifle barrel, I would have it rebored and freshened up on the outside and used as a basis for a hand made gun. Otherwise, nothing special about it. By the time the percussion era came around, a lot of barrels could be bought pre-made. Remington specialized in making barrels for gunmakers.
 
This may help identify what the barrel is from? Are under ribs dovetailed on? I can’t tell by looking that it had a under rib and I can’t tell any signs of where the stock rubbed on it or ended. It is still loaded.
I have not done any thing. when I do, the first thing will be to unload it.

Dovetails
Front 7/8 inch long, 5 and 1/2 inches from muzzle.
ORBF7-8.jpg

Middle 1/2 inch long, 15 and 1/2 inches from muzzle, 19 and 1/2 from back of breach plug.
ORB-M1-2.jpg


Rear 7/8 inch long, 28 and 1/4 inches from muzzle, 6 and 1/2 inches from the back of the breach plug.
ORB-R7-8.jpg



I do appreciate all the help thanks.
Tinker2
 
Well, derust it & cut it up if you must - but I think you'll be making a BIG mistake.

Think about WHY there are three barrel dovetails, ILO a more normal two - and think about Civil War era snipers and tube/glass sights, and how they were mounted.

No wonder those buyers got agitated/excited/frustrated.

.
 
think about Civil War era snipers and tube/glass sights, and how they were mounted.
Click to expand...

If this is the case, that would be WAY cool! But, would a "number of people" at any given gun show even be aware of this tidbit of information?

tinker2, research what PetahW has said. You could have a real treasure. Maybe you shouldn't unload it afterall!
 
I am sorry that I did not make it more clear, the last of the pictures are the three dovetails on the bottom of the barrel.

The reason that I am posting about this is so I don’t destroy anything of historic interest.

Trust me, I would give or donate this to the right place or person, if it could be shown to have some historic value, rather then destroy it in some project that any old barrel would do.



Tinker2
 
Bottom ? I appologize - my "sniper" comment would only apply if they were in/on the top flat.

Since you've clarified they're in the bottom flat, there's only one explaination for the front and rear dovetails -
The rearmost dovetail is for the barrel loop which accepts the wedge that attaches a halfstock BP rifle to the barrel; and
The front dovetail would be for a thimble to carry the part of the ramrod that's not nestled inside the forend wood.



There's two possible explainations for the middle dovetail:

1) A location for a second ramrod thimble - no special reason for excitement.

2) A location for a second barrel loop/wedge, only used on original J&S Hawken rifles and very few modern clones - probably the cause for the excitement.

FWIW, I would definitely drip some oil down into the load, via the nipple.

.
 
I believe many other makers used more than one barrel wedge or pin to attach the barrel to the stock. Not all that uncommon.


Hawken isnt the only maker that would make the barrel valuable to someone. There were many quality makers.


As for myself, I think it would be very cool to have it cleaned up and freshed out and used to make a new rifle. Not to brand new condition, but cleaned up enough to be usable and still have some character. A few pits here and there, and the barrel and all metal browned, would be interesting.
 
Whitworth Barrell?

I could be wrong, and I dont have my glasses handy, but one of his photos of the CROWN of the barrell appears to show flat sides in the crown.

Is it, or could it be a WHITWORTH BARRELL?

If it is an original whitworth barrell, it is worth a fortune. Many enthusiasts would readily recognize that.

Whitworth had a mechanical fit in the matter of rifling, in that it was an OCTAGON BORE that used an octagon shaped bullet. The bore was machined with a twist. In this way, no slug would skip or strip rifling.

His barrell might be a badly abused late production barrell. I was once asked to restore a somewhat modern rifle that had been leaned against the wall of a chicken coupe, and not remembered for twenty years. It had a similar "patina" and it took a lot of hard work to bring it back to something better than an eyesore. Chicken **** is hell on an iron surface.

It is quite an interesting barrell that he has there. There is no reason to "cut it up." Take a little more time to explore it a little bit.
 
“Whitworth had a mechanical fit in the matter of rifling, in that it was an OCTAGON BORE that used an octagon shaped bullet.”
Click to expand...

It's not a octagon [8 ] sided bore, it’s hexagon [ 6 ] sided bore.
I don’t know if you can tell the rifling twist by just looking down
the bore with a light, but it look like a fast twist rate.
I am just guessing, but it looks like maybe 1 in 30 ?
Six groove rifling .50 caliber? Wide lands and narrow grooves.
Maybe hexagon bore but the outside is octagon.


Tinker2
 
If that had any value, it lost it long ago. What you have there is a rusty old barrel. But you already knew that.

Think of it as getting part of a frame of a Stutz Bearcat steam car. Without the rest, no value as a collector.

However, if there were some people that thought you were insane for getting it to cut it up, test how insane they are. You might be able to buy lots of new barrels with what they might pay.

Fools and their money are soon parted! :D

The Doc is out now. :cool:
 
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