4575wcf

Hey All It has been two years since I submitted this electrolysis post to the shotgun forum, but I still had the pictures on the PC, so I will duplicate it here Picture #1--This is Oscar. AKA known as "Shopcat" or "Donor of the Bucket" Picture #2--The Tidy Cats 27 lb cat litter bucket. Just about made to order for de-rusting a shotgun receiver. Picture #3--!2 inch pieces of 3/8 inch rebar from Home Depot are cut off a few inches and wired into the "racks" in the side of the bucket. Two small holes drilled through each side of the wire at the top of the bucket allow soft iron ties to hold them in place. Picture #4--Another tie at the very top is put on by the same method using solid copper wire to attach the DC electric source. Picture #5--The receiver is hung off a dowel with soft iron wire, with a receiver flat pointed toward each corner of the bucket containing a rebar because the process works pretty much line of sight. Picture #6--In this operation, the receiver is hung by slipping the wire through the trigger plate hole in the bottom of the water table and bending out a T shape to keep it from slipping off. Conforming grooves are rasped into the bucket top to hold the round dowel in place on the bucket. Picture #7--The whole set up. The Super Soda, the modified bucket, and the battery charger. A quarter cup of the Super Soda with enough water to fill the bucket up to the first set of wire holes is about the right mix. I would guess this bucket holds about 2 1/2 gallons. Picture #8--The leads are hooked up. Black (negative) goes to the soft iron holding the receiver, and red (positive) goes to the wires connecting all of the rebars around the bucket, completing the circuit. Picture #9--The receiver after the treatment with the rusted components removed. I gave the thing about 8 hours, then another 8 before I was satisfied with the results. A LOT of junk comes off in the solution in the form of millions of small bubbles forming a cloud around the metal. You will swear it is dissolving; I did, but nothing of the sort happens. Only the rust seems to be going away. Notice the coiled trip spring came out as a solid cylinder!

NIce one! That's a beauty! I may have found a solution to my chopper lump barrel forging operation. Looking around online, I did some research on the Belgian Damascus barrel industry when such barrels were the world leaders 1880-WWI. Other than the fact that I am starting with a shorter drilled tube versus a shorter welded and wrapped spiral tube, the forging process should be the same. The metal is heated and pressed to shape around the mandrel with the mandrel knocked out between heats, and then finished the same way under the power hammer. It seems a viable starting point anyway. A large strong foot operated press with compound leverage seems not too hard to figure out. Hydraulics is going to be too slow for the process in my opinion. As others have stated, I need first to get a feel for working the metal so I will need to begin hammer forging chunks of 4140 into tooling and go from there. Apprentice blacksmiths learned to draw, part off, and head hand wrought nails first, that is probably a good place to start. Making a cut off hardy for my anvil and a nail header both from 4140 should be good starting projects.

Thank you for the welcome Irondragon. I have been an avid tinker with blackpowder guns for years. I don't know when you will see any activity from me on the forging end of things, this is new territory. All the same, with the current state of our country, make do and make your own is the new normal, so that is what we are gonna do. The old timers did it, some of them knew most of what you needed to know about nearly everything to keep a home place going. Necessity being the mother of invention.

The very first operation I did on my FWT LC Smith frame was to free up a hopelessly rusted and locked up rotary bolt and top snap. I wrote into the LC Smith forum and received the suggestion to use electrolysis. I knew absolutely nothing about the process, but I have a co/worker who is a collector and restorer of one-lung engines and such. I used electrolysis with information I found online, and advice from my antique engine guy with very good results. I wrote up and photographed the whole process in my LC Smith build on Shotgun Forums which, if I do say so myself, covers the subject pretty well. You can find it in Shotgun Forums, not Shotgun World, under the High End and Specialty Gun Forum. The post is very close to the first one of the series of #150 so far, perhaps third or similar.

The other problem is the condition of a barrel set you are likely to turn up. The hinge pin area is usually going to be worn, and the bites peened through use. By the time you correct all of these issues and sleeve the thing with new tubes, you have created a marginal barrel assembly at best. A brand new monobloc with brand new barrels--and you are just as good as Beretta and Browning--and they do come undone. Rarely, but it can and does happen to all of them. Chopper lumps barrels with a mechanical fit--such as the Winchester 21--do nothing of the sort.

I have thoroughly examined the monobloc method of joining barrels, when I first started my research. I am capable of building a monoblock for any double, and I own a suitable milling machine. I prefer the chopper lump method because it is the strongest, safest, and most durable method to join a barrel assembly. Any of these methods is a lot of work, so there is no point trying to go the easier route because there really isn't one. I expect to charge for the finished shotguns, and a customer who wants a chopper lump barrel assembly fitted to their pet is going to have to want one really bad. If I have to go traditional, I will learn to forge out the chopper lump blanks solid with the power hammer and open dies, and then figure out a way to deep hole drill them here at home. If there is a way to forge them as hollow cylinders at home, even if it is complicated and time consuming, that would be okay. A method to keep the solid rolls heated to reduce heat loss, and an Argon gas shield for the work--is that something that might make the rolling possible?

Hi Biggundoctor Missing barrels is going to be the norm. Interesting point on the formation of scale, I read that up to a 20% loss of material due to oxidation can occur. The chopper lump barrels I see forged in videos are hammered out solid from a billet with a large power hammer. The main concern then would be scale inside the tube forming around the mandrel? I would like to be able to find, procure, make one somewhat oversized chopper lump barrel half, rights and lefts, that would cover any shotgun from Winchester 21's and Parkers on down to early Stevens' with the proper machining. If said barrel half had a rough starting hole through, so much the better.

HI George Thanks for the welcome. I updated my profile to give a bit more information as suggested. The steel used will be cold or hot rolled SAE 4140 round bar. Sorry to get so wordy with that initial post, I just wanted to establish exactly where it is I want to eventually go with this forging. The machines and tools required will be built here at home, my welding, forging skills etc. etc. will be picked up and honed by getting the shop equipped and restoring/building the various tools and equipment that I have or will purchase. My main question is whether forging and rolling a larger tube over a mandrel to draw, lengthen and shape it is practical. Chopper lump barrels are not commercially made that way, and perhaps there is a very good reason they are not. By forging a hollow cylinder, I wish to avoid the deep hole drilling process. I am skilled and trained enough to pull deep hole drilling off, but it requires specialty equipment and expenses I would rather not get into for my purposes.

Hey All Okay, here we go. Career machinist here on the verge of full time retirement. So far, I own a portable forge that needs a bit of restore, I have two hand blowers, one with the forge one bought separately. I have a post vise, not great quality that needs some restore. I have an antique Model A vintage separate garage on the acreage that needs lots of restore, but should make a pretty nice separate shop for my treadle lathe (needs restore), my medium sized anvil, quench tub, racks of tooling etc. Here is the plan. I would like to set up a small double barrel shotgun shop here on the place, specializing in buying, selling, and restoring the various medium quality American made shotguns from the past. I have one shotgun rebuild underway now on another more suitable forum, and several receivers in the incoming rack. I would like to forge chopper lump barrel halves to join together for these receivers. In traditional manufacturing, the forging ends up round, solid, 30 inches or so in length with a single bitted axe shape forged into one end. The two halves, rights and lefts are joined to make a double barrel shotgun assembly. They are then deep hole drilled, reamed, polished, choked, soldered together and regulated (all machining stuff). I am interested to know if such an assembly could feasibly be forged and rolled to shape in a small shop on specialized hand operated equipment. The process would be to machine the full length reverse image of the forging into top and bottom wheels of a rolling mill, then hammer forge, open die forge, and roll a suitable drilled section of annealed 4140 over a proper sized DOM mandrel. The 4140 section would start out shorter with an oversized hole, then get forged down onto the mandrel, drawn longer, the inside diameter reduced the while until eventually it rolled full length through the rolling mill with the rollers completely closed. Then straightened, carbide buttons hydraulically pulled through to iron, smooth and work harden the bore. Then final reaming, honing, choking, {more machine stuff} The DOM offers a center hole in the mandrel to work with should it become stuck, and require drilling out. Heck of a bunch of work I know, I will be learning to forge as I go. So--is this plan feasible? Why or why not? Improvements? Thanks guys.