Chapter 4 deals with designing and fabricating a machine that can perform the three machining operations of drilling, reaming and rifling. Most people who make rifle barrels as a hobby have to purchase their barrel blanks with a hole already drilled through them because they have no way to create a hole long enough and straight enough with their own equipment. This limits the barrel maker to rifle calibers that can easily be produced from commercially available barrel blanks. A machine of the type described in Chapter 4 eliminates this restriction. With such a machine, the barrel maker is free to start his project with a solid bar of steel and end up with a rifle of any caliber he chooses.

             The main body of Steel Helix describes the fabrication and use of a machine that is fully capable of drilling, reaming and cut-rifling any caliber of rifle barrel up to, and including, 4-bore muzzleloading elephant rifles. Chapter 4 takes a detailed look at the components of the machine and specifies aspects of the functions the components must serve. The text then goes on to describe how the components’ functions affect their design and fabrication. The chapter concludes with several very useful techniques for aligning all of the machine’s components precisely on the same centerline.

Chapter 5 discusses the high-pressure oil system of the machine. The standards of oil pressure and flow for deep-hole drilling (gundrilling) operations are the focus of the chapter. There is also an in-depth discussion of adjusting the parameters of the drilling operation if the oil pressure and flow cannot be maintained at recommended values by the machine’s high-pressure oil system. This is not merely a theoretical discussion; the recommended adjustments have been tried and proven in my own shop.

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