First thanks to all the encouraging words, they are needed.

Now, the reason i broke the centre is that i was pushing it against an aluminium centre that i had put in the chuck. This enabled me to use the full lenght of the barrel as LW doesnt expect anyone to build a double with the 577 barrels an make them only 65cm long.

As you see i need some room for the steady rest, and next time i will turn everything down to a cylinder at the maximum diameter as the force of the steady rest pushes the bed away when pulled over a step leaving an uncut portion of the barrel some 3mm wide.

So i took the centre apart and its seems it had two standard bearings on it, no wonder it broke.

Here i changed the bottom bearing against an axial bearing instead and now it held up ok.

Now the barrels are turned and i need to construct a lump with two conic holes with a slight convergence to allow the barrels to cross at say 30m. Thats no fun on an old mill so i got one of these.

Its my new wire edm.

Hm, i wonder how it works?