How the heck do you rifle PVC pipe??

[DasGestapo]

recently i came across the rifled barrels for sale on spud tech, and i was wondering how i could do it myself. I have a decent lathe, but no clue as to how to go about the rifling process

does anybody have any clue how to do this?

[hi]

When i was building my second cannon i was talking to one of the employees at my hardware store and he immediately saw that i was bulding a cannon. we talked for a few minutes. after about 5 minutes of talking spud guns, he told me how he rifled barrels.

I have no idea if this will work, but he said that it did. You need one of those big cork screws that screw into the ground to ties a dog to. they can be found at a pet shop/ hardware store. I you dont know what its called just say," the cork screws that screw into the grounds to tie dogs to" and they will know what you want. anyway, he said that you basically just slowly and carefully screw it down the pipe. Again, i have no idea if it works, but if you have one and some extra pipe, try it.

[Velocity]

The owner of Spudtech (Joel) owns a huge rifling machine (size of a Suburban), but he is not currently processing orders, and therefore is unable to sell rifled barrels.

You can make your own... but they almost always suck. People have stuck nails through wooden dowels and pushed them down their barrels, turning the dowel at a slow rate. While this may rifle the barrel, it probably does not come out even and probably hurts accuracy more than it helps it.

One member (killagorrila I believe) sold rifled barrels for a while; you might want to ask him

[DasGestapo]

thanks!!
i think that maybe if you got the dog stake down thingy hi mentioned and milled nice points onto the front you could use it.
i think that if i heat it up then engage the autofeed on my lathe at like 1 foot per 10 secs then spin the bit at around 200 RPM that might work
idk
if Joel does it with a real rifling machine to get such good results i may just be in trouble for now
thanks for the suggestions@@

[hi]

uhh, i have never rifled a barrel, but i think 200 rpm is fast. i would think that that would just a bore out the pipe and make it larger inside, like a drill. i would think that you would only want maybe 1 turn every 15 to 20 inches. thats what they do on real guns. i dont know, im no expert on rifling, just a thought. I guess that since its your gun you just have to experiment with it.

[jrrdw]

I thought most rifling was like 1:20, 1 full turn in 20". I saw where Pimpmann22 was thinking a metal cutting bit on a long piece of all thread might work. You can find it by doing a all forums search on "rifling barrels". Yea there will be a lot to look through, but all the better, that means new ideas from old ones.

[hi]

my .22lr Remington is 1 turn every 18 inches and has a 18 inch barrel, so the round makes one full turn before it leaves the barrel.

[paaiyan]

Yea, 200 RPMs is way way too much. What are you shooting anyway, if you're trying to rifle a gun for potatoes just forget about it, that wont even work. But for a large bore weapon, I'd say about 1 turn every 2 feet.

[hunter1992]

my black powder muzzleloader has 1 turn every 48 inches and some even have 1 in 68. you probably would wanna stick with somthing like that. Im not an expert but anything with mor twist and a potato or whatever you want to shoot is just going to skip through the rifling. But i realy don't have expierince with rifling spud guns....

[boilingleadbath]

I've had this spreadsheet kicking around on my hard drive for a while.
It supposedly calculates various... numbers regarding the stability of bullets in flight.

Note that it's made for supersonic spire-point bullets, so I don't know how accurate it'll be for our potatoes...

That posted, most rifling machines that cut are either button-riflers or single-point cutters, and rotate the tool either through a guide rod or through a sine-bar system.

[paaiyan]

Yea, most muzzleloaders have a slow twist. Most rifles are about 1:20 - 1:24, and pistols are around 1:16. Do be careful rifling a potato gun though, if the pbject you're using to rifle it is very large it'll cause stress on the pvc and possibly make it more susceptible to cracking later.

[hi]

maybe use sch80 if it weakens it.

[)DEMON(]

There are how-to's on rifling barrels, use the damn search engin It is an old thread made by RNA deulers I think.

[Blitz]

I've seen Joel's lathe that he uses to make the lands in PVC, but it was a very exotic setup that I can't even totally remember (I was just impressed that he didn't have to park his car in his garage, considering the insane amount of cabinets and machinery he had. hehe)

[jimmy101]

Instead of cutting the grooves into the barrel you might consider building up the lands instead.

Wild Ass, Untested, Method 1:
Get some, say, 1/8" thick by 1/4" wide plastic (PVC would be perfect) and glue it in a spiral inside the barrel.

Wild Ass, Untested, Method 2:
Get on old metal slinky. Stretch and insert into barrel (probably only work in a 1" or 1.5"D barrel since the slinky is too narrow for a 2"?). Get big-ass voltage source (120 V from the wall, arc welder ....) and connect to the slinky. Hit the slinky with voltage for an instant. With luck, the metal slinky will melt/fuse into the barrel.

I would think that 1 turn in 50" inches is about right. I believe that is what Joel does. For a 3' barrel that would give about 200 rps (assuming 300 fps muzzle velocity), for a 6' barrel about 400 rps (for 600 fps).