Question=  did Harry Pope bore his own barrels--we know that he reamed and rifled his barrels but did he bore [drill] them.    leadball

I also seem to remember reading (possibly in Campbell's books) that he purchased drilled, but unrifled, barrel blanks--from winchester I think--then reamed and rifled them.  Its a vague and possibly inaccurate memory, but there was something about the quality of the win. barrels he liked, whether it was straightness, alloy consistancy, or simply price, I don't recall.
dws

Leadball, I own a complete Hartford Pope outfit in 38-55. complete with False Muzzle and all the bells and whistles. It is stamped on the outside of the Barrel 38-55. I expected when I removed the forend to see 32-40 or some other small caliber stamped underneath. But it is also stamped .38 under there. When I lettered the  Rifle at Buffalo Bill Museum the letter states "shipped ***1897  as a .38 Bore" I forget the month & day dates right now. Pope had a really good relationship with Winchester and early on I suspect he did not have or was not setup to do the first deep hole drilling operation. But he was certainly able to take a drilled barrel and set it up and finish ream and rifle it. Back then gunsmiths were all setup for resetting and reboring barrels as there was a lot of it. When you look at the history of Schoyen and Zischang you will also see many instances of them reboring up to larger calibers because it was requested by the customer for one reason or another. I do know that later he was drilling and making barrels right from scratch. But initially he may have had to have barrels with a hole already in them. Regards, FITZ.

I guess they liked 'em "fire-lapped" with all the stressesr relieved by shooting them out.

This 'seasoning' of barrels is spoken of occasionally in some of the 19th century writings but wasn't mentioned much (to my limited knowledge) after the first few years of the 20th. It occurred to me that just possibly the well-known practice of seasoning cast iron for a year or two before machining might have had some influence upon their thinking. Remember this was back in the infancy of the development of steel as we know it today, the basic process was invented in the 1850s and folks were still experimenting with things like cast steel and malleable iron etc.

Possibly some of the 'steel' of those days DID respond favorably to the seasoning, or possibly it was wishful thinking, still thinking inside the box as it were. Interesting, always something new to learn.
ttfn, Joe

We havea an old muzzleloader barrel maker that lives near me, he always used car axles for his blanks, I think he prefered a particular manufacturer, but I can't remember what one.

He would have a supply of these "blanks" that he would connect  together and drag behind his tractor as he or his son preped a field for planting.

There was an amount of time he did this for each batch.
He thought it made a difference.
He stopped making barrels long ago due to age and liability crap.

Re burying stock blanks, it IS an excercise in feeding termites.

However I can attest from bitter personal experience that it is a VERY good idea to let a supposedly completely dry but highly figured blank season for at least two years before profiling to general shape, and then let it sit another two years before final inletting & finishing. Even after all that seasoning time I have a one-piece stock that warped upon being  kept in the drying cabinet for the stock finish to dry.

I believe this was due to a too-high temp in the cabinet combined with swirling gnarly figure in the forearm combined with wide swings in humidity in my geographical area, but the fact remains that it warped & remains warped to this day. Caused me to use a Dutchman joint which I despise, but I despise inletting gaps even more.

Re burying rifle barrels, I already gave my ideas on that.

Re barrels being more accurate after reboring, I believe that with modern 20th century steels it depends much more upon the expertise of the reborer rather than upon the assumption that the barrel has been stress-relieved by shooting. Most cut-rifled barrels have no stresses anyway, at least not any stresses that haven't already been relieved by the usual heat-treatment of alloy steel. All the cut-rifle barrelmakers I know tell me that they never stress-relieve AFTER the machining since the stress relief has already been done and the machining imparts no additional stresses at all.

I believe it's safe to say that a rebore by Pope or Schoyen or Zischang or similar or most modern reborers would have necessarily been done with more expertise than the original barrelmaker. So of course the rebore would shoot better IMO since most reborers are better workmen than the usual original mass-production factory makers.
JMO but the burying makes a good story anyway, Joe