Has anyone ever made a gun all by hand without the use of machines? How do sculptors work with metal? Could a metal gun that worked be made from scratch?

Hello Rosie:

COULD a metal fabricator fashion a barrel straight enough NOT to explode when fired??  Yes..  Is it likely?  No.

excon

Since I  am 100% PLUS ignorant about guns I wouldn't know m'dear. That's why I keep asking.  Thank you for your reply excon. :)

To be at all effective and safe for its own user, a gun has to be made of the right materials and to a good standard of accuracy. Although in theory it may be possible to make a weapon by hand without machine-tools, and probably with whatever materials could be found, it would be a lengthy and difficult project, and probably rather crude and inefficient. Probably dangerous to its user too - well, own fault!

And yes, a gun could be built from scratch like that, but it does really need machine-tools to cut the metal components to correct shapes and sizes, and the skills to use those tools properly.

How do sculptors work with metal? It depends what they are doing:

1)  A cast-bronze statue is made by first creating a version in clay, wood or some other suitable material.

Next, that master version is used as the template for the sand mould into which the molten bronze will be poured - most sculptors contract the mould-making and casting to a foundry as those two processes alone need specialist equipment and skills. Especially so if the statue will be hollow, as most are to save weight and costly metal.

Finally the cooled casting is removed from the sand and the sculptor takes it back to the studio to clean off the rough surfaces and knobbly bits left by the casting, and polish it to its finished form.

The processes from "Next..." on are the same as for casting almost anything metal: the foundry may have the sculpture mould next to one for, say, a water-pump body or some other purely functional item. 

2) Some sculptors build steel fabrications, and normally do all the work themselves: cutting and bending pieces of metal to size and shape, and welding them together.     

The gun question touched a bit of raw nerve with me because my own interests in amateur engineering and machinery-preservation seemed threatened a while ago by a (UK) Government or Legal committee. It thought it wrong that the likes of me could own privately and un-registered, metal-working tools and equipment intended for entirely honourable purposes, but which could be thought to be used for making weapons. It seems to have followed a court case in which a man was jailed for buying de-activated guns and re-activating them for sale to criminals, in his back-garden workshop. The proposal seems to have been quietly dropped as not helpful, desirable or workable. Most of the armed criminals in Britain seem to be able to buy their illegal weapons as fully-working black-market items anyway.

Thank you for your thoughtful, helpful and information-filled response to my question Durdle. Good grief! How did the government KNOW that you had unregistered metal-working tools and equipment? Why is that their business? Do you  have a criminal record that you would be on their radar? That is really some nerve! I think preservation of homes and tools and equipment and books and films and whatever we have is essential to knowing where we came from and whom we were. I mean there are historical preservation SOCIETIES that do nothing but that.....preserve. Who was the fink?  Seriously?  Boy I'd sue someone for invasion of privacy and/or slander or something! :(

Oh dear, I'd better explain what I said...

The Government does not know I have non-registered equipment, nor does it care, and such equipment does not have to be registered at all.

A committee looking at gun crime, presumably, was concerned at the ease with which metal-working tools may be bought, new or second-hand, by private individuals; and suggested some sort of control which probably would have amounted to a registration or licensing scheme.

I don't think it wanted to restrict anyone's hobbies as such, although that could have been the effect by adding extra, external costs to what can be expensive hobbies..

More likely the committee members discovered there is a large and flourishing trade in tools and machinery to the general public, but did not really understand why. Cock-up rather than conspiracy!

A terrible case, indeed.

Certainly.

Well, not quite from scratch (or in this case ore), but lots of firearms were made by hand by gunsmiths prior to the advent of machine tools (assuming you don't consider a blacksmith forge, hammers and other hand tools, anvils and hardy tools to be "machine" tools). Some dedicated history buffs and custom firearms companies still turn out quite usable, and quite beautiful firearms completely built by hand, including the gun barrels. Just be ready to get out your checkbook. Here's an example.

http://www.culverart.com/Damascus%20Gun%20Barrels.htm

The perceived difficult part of making a firearm is fabricating the gun barrel/firing chamber. Before the advent of deep boring machines and rifling machines gun barrels were usually cast from molten steel or iron (cannon barrels sometimes from bronze) or "forged" around a mandrel either from a solid sheet of steel or from spirally-wrapped or woven strips of steel (the forging process also welds the steel strips together as one). The inside surfaces of those barrels were then honed to smooth perfection. That "technology" actually came out of the middle east, at least for gun barrels.   Look up Damascus steel and twisted steel gun barrels. (The Germans developed their methods too.) Those barrels tend to be works of art. In fact, there's still a market for those hand-made shotguns among some (wealthy) shotgun aficionados. A word of advice though . . . don't fire modern black powder in older weapons with twisted steel barrels. Some of the newer twisted-steel barrels can handle those higher chamber pressures but that should be verified with the gun manufacturer (and the barrel should be stamped accordingly).

Back to the machine question . .  machines buy production speed, interchangeability of parts and ammunition (in the "old" days that Kentucky rifle came with a bullet mold because the bore diameter was probably unique to the gunsmith, if not the actual gun) and consistency of quality (sometimes bad) . You still need to get a gunsmith involved to "tune" the weapon if you want high accuracy and consistent operation; to take that last "thousands" of bow out of the barrel, hone the trigger group parts to perfection, make sure it's "bedded" into the stock correctly . . . . those kinds of details.

I disagree with you about the need for machine tools to precisely cut and shape metal. Those kinds of tools enhance the speed of fabrication, nothing more. It's quite possible to turn out precision metalwork with common metal-working hand tools: hammers, anvils, hardy tools, files, calipers. A forge is nice too, but not absolutely necessary. This point was driven home to me when a friend whose father was a very highly skilled machinist told me what his father's "graduating" test was at the end of his training. He was given a block of steel, a measurement scale and a file. First he had to turn the block into a perfect cube. Then he had to turn that cube into a perfect sphere. Then he had to turn it back into a perfect cube. Each shape had to a certain size and within a certain tolerance.

Also, sand-casting is NOT the only method used when pouring metals. And by the way, those "bumps: that have to be trimmed off are from the sprue and riser holes and their "gates" and from vent holes on larger castings.

Got it! Thank you for the clarification Durdle. I KNOW there are Big Brothers  monitoring everyone everywhere worldwide all the time but there has to be a line even for that. I wonder who decides what that line is and does it keep moving?

Geez Marguerite. How scary is that? Thank you for your reply and Happy Saturday! :)