I made some chips on the old girl the last couple of days. I find great pleasure in doing things old school. All flats were milled off the compound swiveled to split the taper. Slow going and lots of tramming setups, but the barrel really turned out well. Flats are sized, parallel to the bore and each other within .003" worst case. I drawfiled and polished one flat to see just how purty it will finish up. Sun is coming out and life is good. Happy Easter to all!

Beautiful machine work. Beautiful old machine.
My hat is off to you. Could not do better with more modern machines, maybe a little faster but not better.
Chuck

I do not have any of those pictures.  Interesting...

It is a 1929 South Bend 13". 

I spent most of my working career as a Mfg Engineer surrounded by CNC equipment conducive to blazing speed and high accuracy. It is refreshing to me to step back and slow things down a bit. Yes, it took me a full day to actually cut the octagon. Counting night time worry and brainstorms, it could easily stretch to two or more days. Ninety percent of the time at the lathe was spent in tramming the setups. Working with a double taper on every cut was a good brain exercise . I caught myself setting up incorrectly twice. I had part of the taper reversed. I have often wished that I could be present in the shops of some of the great old barrelmakers.

Thanx for all the nice comments. In hindsight, I'll probably never "flat" another pre-tapered barrel again. Starting with a cylindrical blank is night and day easier. I sure wish that there were enough stock to turn a nice wedding band transition, but I will probably just re-taper to meet the octagon as were the factory Stevens. This is going to be one heavy barrelled 'Bee when finished!

Well, I'd like to see this project, but my screen shows rows of .28-30 brass and another photo of a set of dies for same. This from a thread earlier.
I wanted to see Mike's machine shop assembled after coming in on pack mules and pony express.
All the other threads having photos seem to be working just fine. What is going on with this, do ya suppose.

Marlinguy,
Thats a great idea for the band. That will let me safely experiment with a silver inlay as well. I want to do a couple circumferential silver bands on the wedding band. I started playing with this a while back. I undercut a small dovetailed groove in some barstock and then peened in some 3/32" silver solder. The technique needs more work but it looked pretty nice.

SBoomer wrote on Apr 17^th, 2017 at 10:08am:

Would you end up with a non-tapered barrel or would you machine the taper when starting with a cylindrical barrel?

SSShooter,
The octagon you see is straight. Doing a straight octagon section on a pre-tapered barrel is where all the work is at. Each setup has to account for taper in two planes. The barrel is shimmed off both surfaces that touch the vice. Once a flat is correctly established, the opposing side is only shimmed in one plane. After a flat and perpendicular flat are established, no shimming is required on opposite flats. The remaining four "angled flats" start the routine all over again. To establish the first 45deg flat, I clamped a vee block to the barrel and trammed its bottom surface....that facing the chuck. None of the final four flats referenced the first four by vice contact. I shimmed off the small wedge of remaining original cylindrical taper on the round barrel between flats. Whew....that was too much. 

Never mind the barrel...... I want that lathe!


JMH

SBoomer,
Nice job on the barrel, thanks for the reality check.  It's been many years since I've had to use machines in this manner I've bought mills of different types, super spacers, dividing heads, excess tooling, etc. even CNC's just to prevent ever having to perform operations and setups like this... again.   I do know the process and I admire your ambition.  Thanks for posting.   
Here's a wedding band I did early winter just to see if I could come close to the picture in John Campbells book.  Done a few more since, similar and different, they make a barrel original.  Haven't tried the inlay style yet but it's on the list.
Greg

SBoomer,
I spent quite a bit of time experimenting, thinking along the lines of what you mentioned, knurl then file, even made a concave knurl.  What I found out that worked slick and easy was a single knurl holder and very high quality roll.  The roll has to have crisp edges, nothing fancy on the holder - a piece of 1/2" square stock, drill and ream a through hole the size of the hole in the roll - a short hardened dowel for the axle and you're in business.   
Use the knurling formula to determine exact initial diameter to begin with (the knurl pitch, (ex. .040) divided by pi, and the result of that dividing evenly into the diameter. You can pick a size real close to the diameter desired - generally smaller as the kurling increases diameter slightly)  If this sounds confusing PM me and I'll email a more detailed step by step with examples.
Start the knurling process on the top of the prepped band, I took it close to depth in a straight on position, then I backed the tool out, re-positioned the roll at a slight angle and if you enter the form gently the roll picks up the lead, repeat this process until desired results are obtained.  I donned my magnifying visor and dressed the knurl with a very small file for the finish touches, under a scope at 40x it's a little coarse but with most eyeballs it looks good.  I've done a couple this way and moved on... the silver inlay is next... maybe gold? 
Greg