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OF GUN BARRELS. 



Barrels, it has been asserted, forged from steel, are lighter, 

 safer, and shoot stronger than all others ; but a barrel maker, 

 whose superior excellence renders him a very competent 

 judge, and whose practice is not to dupe his customers, has 

 declared that he has wrought a great deal of Spanish iron, 

 has forged barrels from old scythes, from wire, needles, and many 

 other articles suggested by the whim of his employers ; has 

 raade barrels with a lining of steel, and formed others with a 

 double spiral of iron and steel alternately : yet, so far as he can 

 determine from these numerous trials, the stub iron wrought 

 into a twisted barrel is superior to every other. Wherever steel 

 was used, he found that the barrel neither welded nor bored so 

 perfectly as when composed of iron alone. 



The first object in a fowling piece is safety. Gunsmiths 

 prove their barrels whilst in their rough state, and this is done 

 with the idea that if they burst, the ex pence of further work- 

 manship is saved ; the consequence is, that a single barrel, 

 weighing nearly five pounds, is reduced to three pounds nine or 

 ten ounces : this reduction is confided to the workman, who, if 

 careless or in haste, may take it from the breech, or that part 

 of the barrel where the greatest strength is requisite; and when 

 the barrels are laid together, and the rib soldered on, it is im- 

 possible to discover whether the filing has been too deep. The 

 barrels undergo no second proof, and thus the gun too often 

 becomes a masked battery to him who shoots with it. 



So many barrels have burst, and occasioned permanent mis- 

 fortunes, after having sustained the ordeal of the company's or 

 Tower proving-house, and received their marks as a pledge of 



