I've wondered what the process is for this type of rifling and found this. Many know that a "button" is run through the barrel to produce the rifling. But, since nobody expanded on the process and said what the button really looks like, I thought some would appreciate this detailed explanation I found here. http://firearmshistory.blogspo...-button-rifling.html

expand on the button..good one

Yep, I have been to Douglas barrels in Charleston, WV and saw them do it.

Shilen has a swap meet at their facility in Texas every year and you can see the "hole" process.

Very interesting.


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I'd like to see that operation some day and the cut rifled as well. Interesting pics rich.

Shilens "rifling" process is much less.......sophisticated. But it sure does work!


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quote:

Originally posted by JTEX:
Shilens "rifling" process is much less.......sophisticated. But it sure does work!

How so? I have always figured that it was the other way around based on how they shoot. I truly am interested to know.

I would too, I have two of their match grade stainless barrels and they both shoot very well.

The button puller looks like it was made out of spare tractor parts........

Just a big hydraulic cylinder with a collet to hold the rod with the button and a chuck to hold the barrel......

Very simple and damned effective.

Looks like something Ed cobbled together in his early days maybe.......

It takes them less than a minute to actually rifle the barrel. Then the barrel goes to lapping and air guaging, stress relieving is in there somewhere....

They walk you through the whole process in a tour when they do the swap meet.

I work for Dave Van Horn and we make button rifled barrels. Like most places the equipment is old but was made old school and indestructible. Our gun drill lathes are made by Pratt and Whitney likely to be used for WW-2. The button puller is as JTEX describes, a shop made device.

Before I started working there most of the headaches had been fixed and the system works well. I do as I was trained and I make good product, if a hole goes astray the barrel becomes muzzle brakes.

I have 2 rifles that I made the barrel blanks for, so I have no one to blame for problems. Cool to shoot a great group and be able to say, “Yea, I made that”.

The buttons shown on the link when we use the one that just rifles we also run through what we call a Ball, bore diameter and smooth.

Mark

Well, my description of Shilen's button machine is simplicity. Shilen is very fortunate to have a gentleman that has been with them many years just doing buttons. Jim makes them from carbide. Different lots of steel work differently, so if JTEX remembers they have several hundred buttons in their button rack. The twist rate is ground into the button. Ed devised an adjustable sine bar to help regulate the twist rate. On of the biggest secrets is the lube they use in the button process.
The reason the larger barrel companies buy 50,000-100,000lbs. of steel in a lot is for this reason- it always machines different. It just does not work when you think you can drill & ream a 6mm blank and they all come out .237. Each lot of steel works differently. You change drills and reamers until you are happy. Same thing with the buttons.

quote:

Originally posted by butchlambert:
Well, my description of Shilen's button machine is simplicity. Shilen is very fortunate to have a gentleman that has been with them many years just doing buttons. Jim makes them from carbide. Different lots of steel work differently, so if JTEX remembers they have several hundred buttons in their button rack. The twist rate is ground into the button. Ed devised an adjustable sine bar to help regulate the twist rate. On of the biggest secrets is the lube they use in the button process.
The reason the larger barrel companies buy 50,000-100,000lbs. of steel in a lot is for this reason- it always machines different. It just does not work when you think you can drill & ream a 6mm blank and they all come out .237. Each lot of steel works differently. You change drills and reamers until you are happy. Same thing with the buttons.

What kind og steelmills do you have in US??????
A decent mill can produce the same steel over and over, with excactly the same machinability.
Of cause my expirience is limited to apx 40.000barrels, so i might lack expirience.
The mill we used, could make the steel so uniform, that you had to look werry closely at the certificats to see anny difference.

Natturaly there is a huge difference between different steelgrades like CrMo and Rustinhibited

Well,
Why don't you dominate the US market. You make it sound easy.

WOW !!! 40,000 barrels, thousands of rifles, stocks compleated in mere hours !!! What a bunch of B.S.

quote:

Different lots of steel work differently, so if JTEX remembers they have several hundred buttons in their button rack.

You bet I remember that!

I wasn't poking fun at or deriding what they do. They do what they do extremely well.

I was comenting only on the "Button Puller" I was amazed this was done on such a simple machine. I simply thought there would be much more ......... to it!

But it is like so many things, what appears simple has more processes than you know and a bunch of r & d into the "simplicity".

I am sure there is MUCH more to making barrels that shoot like Shilen's than drilling a hole and pulling a button.

Correct steel, heat treating, stress relief...drilling a straight hole to pull the button through.....

But the button puller looks like something made on a farm......I'm sorry, it just does.

I bet that machines return on investment is just flat off the charts!!!!!


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What kind og steelmills do you have in US??????
A decent mill can produce the same steel over and over, with excactly the same machinability.
Of cause my expirience is limited to apx 40.000barrels, so i might lack expirience.
The mill we used, could make the steel so uniform, that you had to look werry closely at the certificats to see anny difference. [/QUOTE] ................I couldn't answer your question on the specific kind (mfr.) of steel mills here. However, I doubt that all steel mills in the U.S. are created equal and actually different than European ones. I'm sub-novice on metal production, hardly an expert. After 58 years on this earth, I think it is safe for me to assume that, like many other industries, much metallurgy technology came across the puddle from families just like yours and the Germans, French, Belgians and Brits just to name a handful. Did I clear anything up here?[/QUOTE]

No, his infinite knowledge runs this thread.

To be honnest, i find it hard to belive, that compagnies, that in my World is both skilled and knowlegable. Should act as amateurs, and not have found out what mills, is capable of delivering a uniform quality.
I purely don't belive it.
All around the World there is good and bad mills, it is not rocketsience to find out where to buy.
In Europe, it is possible to buy charges of steels excactly to your spec. in Baches of about 6 metric ton. It can be delivered in excactly the heattreatment you specifye, fully stressrelived and ultrasound checked. I ame sure that this is also equaly available in US.

I dont have much expierience in buttonrifeling, but form some testruns we made, we found, that a werry small diference in the reamed dimention could result in a 4 times larger difference when buttonrifeled. Our test showed that a variation of 0,01mm in the reamed hole could change the boredimention of the buttonrifeled barrel as mutch as 0.04mm. This test was performed in steel from the same bar.

jargen, .010mm is a large measurement in barrel bores and groove diameter. The better barrel makers in the USA hold their dimension in bore and groove to less than half of .010mm in uniformatie (sp) from end to end. That would be less than .0002".

quote:

Originally posted by butchlambert:
jargen, .010mm is a large measurement in barrel bores and groove diameter. The better barrel makers in the USA hold their dimension in bore and groove to less than half of .010mm in uniformatie (sp) from end to end. That would be less than .0002".

Uniformatie in the same barrel, is not that dificult. The difficult thing is to obtain uniformity over manny barrels. My expierince is that a carbide reamer Wears 0.01mm over a run of 100-200holes, but you have to sharpen the taper a couple of times over that process.
By lapping it is quite easy to obtain almost perfect uniformity in the entiere barrel, if that's what wanted. Generally we used a systematic lappingtecknique, where we build in a slight taper towards the muzzle, the taper was from 0,005 - 0,01mm. That was to make the barrels less sencitive to fouling. so one could maintain a high accuracy over several hundreds of rounds. That taper also improwed the lifetime of a barrel.

Getting back on topic here a bit. I wonder who came up with the term "button" as used in rifling. Seems more like a cold-swaging process to me. After all it is a die being forced through a material to alter it's shape. Button seems a bit too simple. Could button be a machinists term?

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quote:

Originally posted by custombolt:
Could button be a machinists term?

The term 'button' is used in various tooling for metal shaping/forming processes,..and has been for some time.

Button die.


die buttons are the female tooling component, when punching out[shearing] metal.


milling machine Button cutters.


Button broach. - these are also used to create rifling in barrels,
but they actually cut the rifling,[rather than deforming the metal].. to create the prefered bore dimensions.

Excellent information Trax. I'll read this more than once. Very good stuff. Thanks. Ray