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I looked at the Westley Richards on Champlin's website some time back. It looks like the barrels are sleeved, even though they look like shoe lump construction. I don't think they were built from the ground up on the rebuild.

According to the description, it's a rebuilt gun - originally a .30-06. Must have been one huge .30-06.

I would have a hard time getting excited about those sleeved barrels.

Curl

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Curl,

The barrels need a trip to John Roberts in England or one of the good barrel guys here for TIG welding the seams. Then good buffing and a re-black with touched up engraving and you wouldn't know the barrels were sleeved. As it is, the seams just don't cut it, and attempting to hide them with that engraving is worse.

JPK

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JPK

Can you tell me how that would work please.

If one Tig'ed at that point on the barrel, one would have to anneal, normalise and reharden the barrels.
This would melt all of the soft solder and possibly the brazing between the chopper lumps depending on the melt/re-melt threshold.
This would require the whole barrel set needing to be remade.
To do less than that, especially if the replacments were 4140 as many are, would leave a big question mark regarding embrittlement and or a soft spot dependent on heat propagation.

Are you saying that this is a common practice ?

Regards

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I have to defer to John Foster and Company, http://www.johnfostergunmaker.co.uk/ , and other barrel experts who TIG weld sleeved barrels as a normal course of business on the subject of what needs done when. Perhaps the TIG welding is done before ribs, eh, don't know myself. Barrels are not hardened so I can't imagine that is any issue. But I do know that it is the proper way of sleeving barrels and done very, very frequently for both rifles and shotguns.

If you look at Searcy double rifles, you will see that their mono blocked barrels - aka sleeved barrels - are also TIG welded to remove the seams. Most all Searcy barrels sets are mono blocked, all except their top end rifles for which chopper lump barrels are an option.

Edited to add that my understanding of the TIG welding process is tha the heat required for welding a joint can be very localized. Whether this is because of the technique itself or because the technique is practical with heat sheilding or abatement - like, for instance, ice baths in front and behind the weld seams - I don't know first hand.

Edited a second time to add that I have a pair of high end Greener side lock 12ga shotguns made in 1919 that have two barrel sets each. The original barrels were 30" and a second set for each gun was made circa 1950 that were 26" and 2 3/4" chambered. Some fool cut the original 30" barrels to 26" and the second 26" sets ballanced poorly. I had John Foster & Co sleeve all four to 29". The guns returned and when I look very, very closely, I can see a slight color change at the seam near the bottom of the barrels on one set of barrels, the other three are invisible. I doubt a corsury inspection by anyone would reveal the color change on the one set, but I know where to look and why and for what.

JPK

Edited by JPK (04/12/08 03:47 PM)

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