I have a colt 1861 repro and since I got another one I decided to cut down the barrel on the first one.
I found I could put a cut in the barell with a plain edged stainles steel kitchen knife, and I was able to cut quite a bit through the barell with a serrated kitchen knife.
(I only switched to a saw later because the knife was a wedge shape and could'nt saw through)
Is this normal for all guns, just black powder repros or did I just get a defective gun?
(I'm just concerned cause the steel in kitchen knives isn't even all that hard!)
And the kithchen knives hadn't been dulled at all.
yeah, seriously. I'm glad I've only fired it at half charge before, the material it's made of has a consistency more like goo than steel.
Dave's right. A gun barrel is usually in the 40 Rockwell hardness range....those cheapo serrated knives you find around are 60+ so they hold an edge forever. Those knives, like razor blades, will snap in half if you flex them too much, though.
When you fire a bullet, the barrel looks sort of like those cartoons where the cat gets sucked down the pipe and the bulge moves along quickly. If you had a hard steel barrel, the bullet would hit the rifling and the entire thing would shatter into a thousand pieces. The soft steel deforms then returns to shape on every shot.
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