The English stub barrels are deservedly celebrated for their superior elegance and strength, as well as for the accuracy with which they throw their ball or shot. The iron employed in them is formed of stubs, which are old horse-shoe nails, procured from country farriers, and from poor people who gain a subsistence by picking them up on the great roads leading to the metropolis. These are originally formed from the softest, toughest iron that can be had, and this is still farther purified by the numerous heatings and hammerings it has undergone in being reduced from a bar into the size and form of nails. They cost about ten shillings the hundred weight, and twenty-eight pounds are required to make a single barrel of the ordinary size. A hoop of iron about an inch broad, or six or seven inches diameter, is placed perpendicularly, and the stubs, previously freed from dirt by washing, are neatly piled in it, with their heads outermost on each side, until the hoop is quite filled and wedged tight with them, the whole resembling a rough circular cake of iron. This is put into the fire, until it has acquired a white heat, when it is hammered either by the strength of the arm, or by the force of machinery, until it coalesces, and becomes one solid mass of iron. The hoop is then removed, and the heatings and hammerings repeated, until the iron, by being thus wrought and kneaded, is freed from every impurity, and rendered very tough and close in the grain. The workmen then proceeds to draw it out into pieces of about twenty-four inches in length, half an inch or more in breadth, and half an inch in thickness.
Damascus barrels are thus described by Hawker:—“I saw the process of making them, the mixture of iron and steel for which is beat out in long bars, and then, previously to being wound round the anvil, twisted by a kind of turning lathe, (similar to wringing clothes when wet), and then beat flat again. Although these are by far the dearest barrels that are made, yet the price of one in Birmingham is very trifling, viz.:—
| Forging | £1 | 10 | 0 |
| Boring and grinding | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Filing and patent breech | 0 | 11 | 0 |
| Proof | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| ———————— | |||
| £2 | 7 | 6 | |
The stub barrels, which are generally used for best guns, cost about sixteen shillings each.”
The Damascene barrels are now unfashionable, and never had anything to recommend them, but as being a pretty novelty.
On boring of barrels there has been much diversity of opinion; and if Colonel Hawker’s theory be correct, the bore should not be perfectly cylindrical.
With respect to the common sized guns, which are usually made for the sports of the field, there are two good ways of boring; the one is, to leave a cylinder for about three-fourths of the barrel, (always taking care, however, to preserve a tightness for a little friction just where the shot first moves), and let the remaining part be gradually relieved to the muzzle. For instance; suppose a barrel to be two feet eight inches long, we would say (beginning at the breech end) about six inches tight, twenty-one inches a cylinder, and the remaining five inches relieved to the muzzle. All this must be done with the most delicate possible gradation, and in so small a degree, that even some gun-makers could scarcely discover it. How natural, then, is it, that many sporting authors should be so far deceived, as to fancy the best guns are bored a true cylinder, and therefore, argue in its favour. This relief has the effect of making the gun shoot as close as it can do, compatibly with the strength and quickness required, which should, however, be increased as much as possible by the best constructed breechings.