In Hammer forged barrels is there any theoretical or practical accuracy difference between the 2?

1894---

A hammer forged barrel would have to be milled octagon from a round barrel after forging. That means the real difference is price.

There would be a concern about stress releiving, too. That's a LOT of machine steps on one barrel.

It seems to me that hammer forging an octagon barrel would be a backwards, ineffecient, inaccurate, and wasteful process and can't figure out why it would be done.

Regardless of the method of manufacture of the barrel blank, all barrels that are milled octagon can distort due to the release of stresses in the blank. A barrel blank that is totally stress relieved will be less likely to move. Many speak of the stresses introduced by the method of rifling (ie, button rifling)or manufacturing method (ie, hammer forging)but cut rifled barrels are just as likely to warp when machined if the steel is not stress relieved. The worst barrels I ever worked with were cut rifled barrels improperly treated (if at all).
Surprisingly to some, the hammer forged barrels I have machined have been remarkably stress free. Whether this is because they come out of the forging operation so hot as to naturally stress relieve or are heat treated subsequent to manufacture I can't honestly say.
I'm hoping to get the opportunity to work with some hammer forged blanks from Swiss Arms. I'll see how they work. Regards, Bill.

I thought the main difference was that one of them you could use a crescent wrench on, the other you need to use a pipe wrench on!

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Hi All,

Bill raises an interesting point about the stability of hammer-forged barrels.

May draw a parallel with wind tunnels. In order to have a laminar airflow, one passes the air stream through a series of wire mesh screens. Downstream of these screens the air consists of a whole armada of extremely turbulent eddies ... sounds crazy doesn't it?

However the eddies cancel each other out quite beautifully and a few chords downstream of the screens the airflow is laminar.

To return to hammer-forged barrels.

The blank is subjected to thousands upon thousands of individual, overlapping blows - each stressing the metal beyond its yield point and flowing it in all directions away from the hammer ... leaving the metal in a pretty non-directional state.

Machine it as you will I would think that, internally, the barrel steel is so confused that it wouldn't have a clue as to which way to move.

As to octagon barrels, is it possible that they have reached the stage of being able to control the actual hammer-forging so as to produce the final outside shape? This would be a pretty good way of reducing the machining to the absolute minimum of finishing operations.

Just my thoughts - use it, don't use it - as you like :-)

cheers edi

Many thanks for the answers. I've just realised why it will have to be round - the wife will realise I've splashed out again as all my other rifles are conventionaly bareled