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Non-Tech : Sturm, Ruger & Company NYSE: RGR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: d:oug who wrote (60)	6/2/2000 8:26:00 PM
From: Daniel Chisholm	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 87

I think that a gun drill might be quite old. Dunno about historical ones, but the modern ones are long single fluted drills (with pressure fed lubricant) -- they self center and are thus capable of drilling very deep very straight holes. They're used for gun barrels (of course), but "gun drilling" is also used as a general purpose deep hole metal drilling technique. I think it was Newton (??) who disproved the caloric theory of heat; his experiment involved observing the drilling of (brass or bronze) cannon barrels, and the amount of heat generated (being proportional to the rate of work done by the horses turning the mill). I never did quite understand how this proved the non-existence of the massless substance called "caloric" that represented the amount of heat an object contained, however I quite clearly remember reading the description of his observations, and they involved boring cannon barrels. So it seems to me that at least for larger guns, drilling is (at least!) several hundred years old. I don't know enough about casting to say whether or not it was practical (or done) for smallarms. Damascus shotgun barrels (an old technique) are made of layered steels. They might have been forged and wrapped (in a red or orange-hot plastic state) around a mandrel. - Daniel