Unfamiliar term...

M

mhb

New member
In a book about the British #4 rifles, I found a reference to wartime barrels rifled by 'dollying' - 'dollied' barrels.
I've never encountered this term with regard to a process for rifling barrels. Can any of our British (or Anglophile) participants shed any light on the term, and exactly what process is meant (buttoning, hammer forging ...)?
Thanks;
mhb - Mike
 
During WWII, the No 4 was manufactured with a number of shortcuts or expedients. One was to construct a two piece barrel consisting of a cold drawn steel tube "barrel" section & a separate breech reinforce that was blacksmithed onto it (don't know what technique was used). Skennerton illustrates these expedients in his book, The British Service Lee (page 162-3 in the 1982 edition). The claim was that conventional barrels could be produced at a rate of 2 an hour & the expedients at 100 an hour.

For those of a querilous nature, there is no history of detrimental outcome from using that process.
 
Once heard a guy refer to cut rifling as track rifling, his description for the sine bar that the rifling machine tracked to determine the twist rate. Suppose the British in their own unique way could see the tracking of a sine bar as a dolly following a corkscrewing tracking device............best I could come up with...............Don
 
Damn, I should have read further, not just checked out the captions on the illustrations. Britain trialled three groove dollied, that is, hammer forged, barrels after the one I mentioned in my previous post, but these hammer forged barrels weren't successful, so they discontinued the trial.

There has to be some relationship to the process of forming sheet panels by hammering against a shaped hand held metal anvil, known as a dolly.
 
Last edited:
John,Don,Mark...

Thanks for the input!
I've still not received any hard reference (from any of the fora on which I posted the question) equating 'Dollied' rifling with any other method of manufacture. Can anyone provide such a reference, or refer the question to a knowledgeable British expert/barrelmaker?
Don:
The sine bar is straight, not curved (at least in fixed-pitch, as opposed to gain-pitch machines), and is offset across the bed of the rifling machine at an angle corresponding to the desired pitch. A block in the groove is driven lengthwise along the sine bar with the travel of the machine carriage. The block drives a rack left and right across the length of the machine bed, which rack drives a pinion attached to the spindle which holds and drives the rifling rod - the combined motions generate the pitch of the rifling in the bore.
Mark:
I did post there, as well as other sites I thought might generate an answer, but no luck, so far.
Thanks again, all!
mhb - Mike
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top