Has anybody outside of the Germans, and that guy the Israelis killed (making a supergun for Iraq) splice barrels together? If you had male/female thread arrangement, cone shaped mating surfaces, and sleved the whole thing, i don't see why it wouldn't work. You could face minute amounts off the male end until the rifling lined up, and then hone the rifling, or make a light cut with your rifling machine (assuming you had one).

papa

You can put lipstick on a pig, but . . .

Ray

quote:

Has anybody splice barrels together?

If there was a demonstrated need, I'm sure some one would be doing it....but what need or desire is being filled?

I've only seen it done on shotgun restorations. I suppose it's technically feasible on a rifle but why, when new barrels are so much cheaper?

I saw a .243 barrel that was about 6 feet long in P.O. Ackley's shop. This was about the mid-1960's. He said it was for NASA to test projectiles against the tiles on the space rockets. He spliced 2 barrels together by threading them in the middle. Said they would get over 7000 fps. Bill

It would take some precision work! Why do it? For the challange! If you have two pieces of barrel and the inclination .... then why not? I only have one piece of barrel so I shall be 'lengthening' it by fitting an old Browning 'silencer' to it. (I don't want high velocity - this is for my 'silent' air rifle pelleted centre-fire rabbit gun). I shall be splicing the chamber to the barrel - the barrel only carrying the leade, and not the throat.

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Said they would get over 7000 fps.

Here we go again.

Ray

In the end of this project many new and interesting things were discovered. As you can see Imr-3031 produced the fasted speeds, the Imr-4350 had the second fastest, and the H-4831 coming in at third place. The 60grain bullet was the lightest and as the bullets got heavier the speeds progressively become slower. Of course the more powder in the cartridge the faster the bullet went. So in the end the fastest combination was 41grains of the Imr-3031 with a 60grain bullet. There were not many unusual things about the results, as one might expect the more powder and the lighter the bullet the faster it went. In a way the only question answered with this project was what type of powder created the most gas when burnt.

41 grains of IMR 3031 won't produce anywhere near the claimed 7K FPS out of a 100Ft. barrel

nor a 30" or any other barrel length . Someone give the ballistics for the above formula 41 grains IMR 3031

and a 60 grain 6mm projectile . Then we will be able to determine what cartridge size needs to actually be

used in order to come close too 7K FPS velocity's . I'm on my shaking lap top and don't have my data

in this piece of JUNK !.

Well loadtech only goes to 40" and it calls 41gr 3031 3925fps. Extrapolating to 6' and it is a 4165fps

A 240 gibbs takes it to around 4800.

I think the only reason it is done is because they could not make one piece barrels that long. Or as below for portability. The German V-5 was done, however, so that damaged sections could be replaced as far as I understand.

Most naval guns were made by "frettage" in that a thicker outer was shrunk over a thinner inner. But the actual rifled part was one piece.

The only "two piece" "weapon" barrel I know...and you Americans who saw service in that period MUST also recall, surely...was that of the 3.5" Rocket Launcher that replaced the earlier bazooka.



Not me! But an Australian soldier in Korea BTW.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Meyer:
I saw a .243 barrel that was about 6 feet long in P.O. Ackley's shop. This was about the mid-1960's. He said it was for NASA to test projectiles against the tiles on the space rockets. He spliced 2 barrels together by threading them in the middle. Said they would get over 7000 fps. Bill

This wouldn't be the first time P O Ackley was slightly off in his estimates!

The need? Well a very compact package for a sniper rifle to be used on some Hollywood movie. Might be able to package it all in a briefcase size package.

That German long gun wasn't rifled though, was it?

I was just thinking. I've got a plethora of these 7mm Maxim barrels. If I could splice them i could build a 40" 7mm barrel to go into my heavy single shot. That might be fun shooting good bullets in a 7mm RUM or STW. I'd have to sleeve it up to 1-7/8" anyway. I would post pictures of my singleshot project here but i haven't figured out how yet. I've got them posted in the artillery section of the 1919A4 board.

Some really bored people!
Butch

Butch, it falls more in the category of trying to avoid being bored, but bored is the operative word.

Butch nothing boring splicing is the optimum word here .

When does friction over take barrel length velocity gain ?.

Now you see Butch I just made it un splice able .

There is pic of NEF 12GA FH on our long thread, of one
I did. Added 12" to short NEF 12ga rifled barrel.
Had barrel section with same rifling and twist
and put them together lined up.I used threaded
sleave as it was easier,just a stout test gun.Ed

quote:

Some really bored people!

Nothing wrong with embarking on a project! It's no different to going out hunting! Hunters are not bored, are they? It's just about having fun with a gun. (In this case, a gun barrel).

papapaul, if I may ask, how long are these barrels you have? Have you considered building a double rifle? A 7x57 Rimmed would be real sweet! A 303-7mm on a Lee Enfield action would be fun too. If I gave you my postal address you could ..... we have heaps of old Lee Enfields here and .....!

The barrels are 20-1/2" long. I put one on a target style rifle and it shot under 1" with some ammo i threw together fast using some mis-matched 30-06 brass. I did think about a double. I have a 7x57R and it shoots great. It is one of those Baikal over unders. I got it when we were seeing coyotes on every pheasant drive. It shoots the 7x57 great and shoots shotshells to point of aim, would make a good turkey or slug gun. But it doesn't fit me for wing shooting so I don't carry it.

P.S. I don't want to start anything, but I would like to refer you all to a post in the wilcat section "when I an Bored". Butch understands, he is just giving me a rib.

P.P.S. Talk about being bored. I'd like to refer you to the 1919A4.com board, forums, artillery, "homebuilt single shot". I have alot of photos posted there including one of the Madsen barrel installed on a target rifle (about halfway down on page 2). This single shot is the one I was thinking about mounting the spliced barrels in, say, 7mm RUM. I alsways wanted a stationary rifle with precision traverse and elevation controls. I don't care if is 50 BMG, I'd rather it wasn't.

Well, because it is unusual and a challenge, I would like to see you do it. Just a thought - to overcome the problem of aligning the rifling, you could rely on a transition fit sleave to hold the barrels together. I attach my 'muzzle breaks' using a sleave 'loc-tited' on. I have heard of a 30-06 with damaged threads which would shoot out on firing (not all the way out) which was then secured with loc-tite and stayed put. Soft solder in a sleave is very strong too. Or epoxy.

(My 'muzzle breaks' are semi-suppressors not muzzle blast intensifiers).

An old 44 Ruger carbine spit the muzzle from leading.

No barrels are available.

An unrifled extender was TIG welded onto the muzzle to make the barrel length 16"+ legal.

Bullets keyholed.

A marlin 444 surplus barrel was installed with some breech removed, and a gas hole drilled. The barrel is now heavy, but accurate.

quote:

An unrifled extender was TIG welded onto the muzzle to make the barrel length 16"+ legal.

Bullets keyholed.

It would be interesting to have studied that barrel to see exactly what caused it to tumble bullets. Just for the sake of knowing!

Not enough spin rpm for the velocity.

Aah! An "unrifled" extender! Right!

Check out Dan Lilja's site. I remember seeing a spliced barrel project in his photos somewhere for an R&D project...don't remember for who.

I did this once. I had a stellite liner out of a M60 Machinegun barrel and lack of common sense at the time. I thought a stellite lined barrel might be nice for shooting high velocity loads without eroding the throat ( I seem to like high velocity for some reason). The actual work was not that hard but I ended up giving up the experiment when I started having blown primers snd brass flow issues.

By the way, the “guy in Iraq” was Gerald Bull, one of my idols for his work with the High Altitude Research Project (HARP) not his other dealings. For further information, Bull was just following a long line of experiments that began during the civil war to make high velocity artillery. The original effort was a multi-chambered weapon that fed more gas from burnt powder along in chambers along the barrel. Hitler’s boys tried the same thing in WWII in the form of the V3. What Bull did was managed to alter the interior ballistics to have a long high pressure curve that did not spike at beginning; more like the pressure curve inside the motor of a rocket. If you like high velocity look up the phrase “light gas gun” on the internet. I have been trying to figure out how to build a smaller version of one of these for myself.

As to bullets keyholing, if you increase the velocity the rate of spin also increases and can overstabilize the bullet. If this happens, the bullet acts like a gyroscope and always tries to maintain the same orientation it left the barrel with and not have the nose follow the ballistic curve. This makes the bullet actually try to fly through the air with the nose pointing off at an angle to direction of flight , which eventually causes the bullet to tumble.

I worked a bit with artillery in the military and ballistics intrigued nme so I usually read anything I can get my hands on. If you really want an long barrel, go ahead and try this. I can give you machining tips on how to do it but I do not think it will work out the way you are expecting it to. Feel free to PM me about the subject if you wish.

Dan Lilja has done it, also for some special project for the government for impact testing against spacecraft components.

AD

It's impossible to get 7000 fps out of any, repeat any, rifled barrel no matter how long the bbl or how much powder is burned at any burning rate.

Back in the '60s my friend Jerry Dykes, a Professional Engineer and amateur gunsmith, was employed at a US govt facility we locals called The Lab. He was working on high-velocity projectiles in an infant DoD program that later led to the development of the magnetic rail gun and other esoteric devices, and his job was to design, construct and then test rifles for the program in its initial investigations.

He blew up a bunch of different-type actions before finally settling on one type & eventually he ended up building his own action with a breech similar to a cannon, but that's a tale for a different thread.

To make a long story short, he found that he was unable to push any bullet more than about 6000 fps without first evacuating the bore of all air. This was achieved at pressures conservatively estimated at up to 150,000 psi, with all the corresponding brass flow issues.

This velocity roadblock at the 6000 fps level was one of the findings that triggered the alternate research into the rail gun.
Regards, Joe

I did this one,an NEF for our 12ga FH testing.
Barrel now 36" rifled. i hate short barrels.Ed

quote:

Originally posted by J.D.Steele:
It's impossible to get 7000 fps out of any, repeat any, rifled barrel no matter how long the bbl or how much powder is burned at any burning rate.

Back in the '60s my friend Jerry Dykes, a Professional Engineer and amateur gunsmith, was employed at a US govt facility we locals called The Lab. He was working on high-velocity projectiles in an infant DoD program that later led to the development of the magnetic rail gun and other esoteric devices...

I have heard the same limitation of smokeless gun powder.

SDI may have caused the USSR to go bankrupt trying to react, but few things in SDI worked. Every scientist and engineer that get near it, was shown the electric rail gun. One had a Copper disc rotating between two magnets, and the other was capacitive discharge. PM me if you need an explanation of the principals of rail guns.

~ 1995 some of the caps went on the surplus market and I know a guy that bought some. Charged up with a Neon light transformer and diode stack, these caps could produce 1,000,000 Amps for a micro second when shorted. The caps are very high Voltage, and very low effective series resistance (ESR) and very low effective series inductance (ESL).
That amateur lab got some high projectile velocities with steam guns, but the project was definitely distracted when they found it would shrink coins to a smaller diameter but thicker with a million Amps [sounds like a 50BMG in lab]. PM me for email if you need a pic of shrunken coins.

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I have a Kel-Tec P32 with smooth tube spliced extension [TIG welded] that increases velocity and does not keyhole, as the twist rate is not marginal to start with. PM me for email if you need a pic of a longer P32 barrel.

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I have been transforming old shotgun barrels into 25" choke tubes with Remchoke male threads on the breech and Remchoke female threads on the muzzle. If I screw a few of these end on the end, I have a 10' long shotgun for silent loads. The shotgun is extremely awkward inside the house. PM me if you need a pic of a 10' shotgun.