As an engineer and I gun nut, I find this fascinating.
This is a video from Remington from 1969 on how guns were made.
This is how a Remington 700 was made in 2011.
Here is a visit to the Remington Ilion and Huntsville factories in 2016, on the 200th anniversary of the company.
Here is a tour of Remington Huntsville in 2016.
It really is amazing to see how the technology of gun making has changed in 47 years.
And before anybody says “they don’t make them like they used to…” in a negative way.
Think about this. Using 1969 technology, the industry would not have been able to make the almost 300 million guns sold in the last 30 years, or the 2 million guns per month it’s been doing in the last few years.
Lastly, if you were ever curios what a cold hammer forged barrel means, here is a video from GFM on the process. I have seen one of these in real life, and it is something to behold. Pounding out a gun barrel in a matter of minutes.
Neat stuff.
The drawback of some of these new techniques is that they are very capital-expensive. Having production methods that can be used in a garage is a good thing, as a backup against political attempts to shut down large manufacturers. Small scale barrel making is well understood (cut rifling). But I’ve been wondering if a variation of hammer forging is doable: explosive forging. That’s a neat and somewhat obscure way of making difficult shapes, in small quantities with simple tooling.
The easiest way to put the grooves in a barrel would be button rifling.
The most interested low capital rifling method is electro- chemical machining, which uses a plastic form inserted in the bore with wires wrapped around it to form the grooves. S&W actually does this on a production basis for pistol barrels. As a bonus for techie types, this is an excellent application for 3d printing to make the forms.
Alternatively I have seen a YouTuber button rifle a pistol barrel using basic shop tools.
In the ’69 video at 1:34, it’s interesting that they said the gun was “electronically bugged” instead of “instrumented.”
1969: Quality. Quality. Quality.
2011: Safety. Safety. Safety.