Armi Sport OVERSIZE BARRELS

[Southron Sr.]

I had an Armi Sport M1855 and the barrel was so OVERSIZE that the gun weighed almost 18 pounds. In other words, the BARREL WALLS WERE TWICE AS THICK AS THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

Are the Armi Sport M1861 and Richmond barrels the same? Are they too thick and weigh too much?

Inquiring Minds want to know.

THANKS!!!

[Maillemaker]

I have a Richmond carbine, but I don't know how much it should weigh. It has a Hoyt barrel, though it seems to fit the stock/barrel bands fine.

Steve

[mb3]

I had an Armi Sport M1855 and the barrel was so OVERSIZE that the gun weighed almost 18 pounds. In other words, the BARREL WALLS WERE TWICE AS THICK AS THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

Are the Armi Sport M1861 and Richmond barrels the same? Are they too thick and weigh too much?

Inquiring Minds want to know.

THANKS!!!
Thats nuts... That like having nearly the weight of two rifles. I guess I got lucky, my Armi Sports Richmond weight 10 lbs, 9.8 pounds without the ram rod.

[R. McAuley 3014V]

While you may be correct with regards to the barrel wall thickness at the muzzle, but have you compared the contouring of the ArmiSport barrel in question to an original to have determined it is 'oversized'? I ask because several months ago, I had bought a ArmiSport Richmond barrel and though it certainly weighed more than an original, I had found it matched the contours of my M1855 Springfield very nicely, but due to the way Armisport had fabricated the breech and tang, if I had wanted to use their barrel would have required me to modify my stock, so I decided to sell the replica barrel and just have my original barrel relined. But as I am sure you know, barrel weight is not just dependent upon its physical properties, but its metallurgical properties as well.

Indeed, much depends on what alloy the barrel is made from? A 1-inch cylindrical tube, with 1/4-inch wall thickness, 40-inches long made of steel would weigh approximately 6.68 lbs. The same cylindrical tube made of stainless steel would weigh slightly more at 6.7152 lbs. If made of cast iron, the tube would weigh just 6.1025 lbs, while the same tube made of wrought iron would weigh approx. 6.463. So, certainly, if you are building a replica musket barrel using a high carbon steel alloy, it is going to weigh more than an 1860s wrought iron barrel, and because certain steel alloys lend themselves better for CNC-machining than others, one alloy may offer more advantageous machining characteristics and hence be more desirable than another. So it is not simply the barrel dimensions that affect the weight.

[Charlie Hahn]

Understand that the barrels on these are a little larger, but I think you will find the weight gain in the wood. The European Walnut is twice the weight as American Black Walnut with out any coatings. Then it is the process they use to finish the wood. If you have ever worked one of these you will find the finish material is driven through the wood, so you have a double gain, the base wood weight plus the added finish material that is pushed into the wood. It is easy to check.

Charlie Hahn

[R. McAuley 3014V]

In an earlier thread here, maybe a couple of years back, the wood density was discussed as well as its moisture content, and while you may think European Walnut is more dense than American Black Walnut, the moisture content can vary greatly on whether the wood is allowed to air-dry outside (like most American makers of the nineteenth century) or is kiln-dried (the process now used for construction grade wood products, though it is not universally used for gun stocks). Typically, lumber that is kiln-dried is dried to a uniform standard of 19% moisture, but also in this process any wood-borne cists or parasites are killed, which cannot be said for air-dried lumber, and for which many a gunstock can attest.

Firstly, American Black Walnut is denser than European Walnut, hence why American makers didn’t elect to import their wood for gunstocks from Europe like they did their gun-metal for making barrels. But as much as some think that Great Britain used English Walnut for their stocks, much of their musket stocks were made of birch or beech sapwood, while their rifle stocks were made of Walnut heartwood, the English imported much of their gunstock wood from northern Italy, in and around Brescia. While the density of Beech can be anywhere between 32 to 56 pounds per cubic foot, Birch has a density of 42 pounds per cubic foot, but American Black Walnut has a density of only 38 pounds per cubic foot, and European Walnut has a density of just 35 pounds per cubic foot, which as rare as any gunstock may be produced having a volume of one cubic foot, one stock may weigh a half to a pound more but not twice the weight of another.

Certainly if you coat two stocks in a common wood finish, and allow one to dry outside or alternatively in a heated room with controlled humidity, and the other placed inside an atmospheric chamber and increase the pressure to at least one atmosphere, talk about increasing the penetration of the wood finish, you can also make some really heavy and strong gunstocks this way. But short of using an atmospheric chamber to increase the density, you will not achieve this by ordinary air-drying unless you clad the stock in metal (like lead). Then you might get one stock weighing twice the other?

[John Holland]

You are amazing Richard!

JDH

[Blair]

Based on my experience, I have not found a great discrepancy in the metal parts and pieces of the repro firearms. There is some, of course, but not enough to add pounds to the overall weight of the finished firearm.
The biggest discrepancy comes from the overall excessive dimensions of the stocks.
Over the years the stocks on the repro's have gotten very much oversized. They have becoming pudgy (to be polite about it) and yes, even fat! Stock profiles have taken on look of being more like that of a pregnant guppy or a pot bellied big.
Bring these stock dimensions back to being more like what is seen on the various original firearms the repro's emulate, one will be amazed at how much weight will be removed.

[Ron/The Old Reb]

Who says your to old to learn something new.http://www.n-ssa.org/vbforum/images/smilies/icon_cool.gif

[Southron Sr.]

After I cut the barrel back to 33 inches, I measured the O.D. of the barrel with a pair of calipers and it was greater than the O.D. of one of Danny Whitaker's Fayetteville Barrels at the same distance from the breech!

I sold it and am happy I did so!

[R. McAuley 3014V]

It is much like you learned all those years ago when you carried the original London Armoury Company musket over to Italy to Louie Amadi, hoping he would use it for a pattern, and how did he respond but to say he had already found a pattern? Tell everyone here whose product he used for a pattern!

The problem with Chiappa is we don't know where their patterns came from?