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Originally Posted by Philip
To check to see if the bore is more or less a true cylinder: do you have access to balsa wood? If so you can shape a cylindrical piece the diameter of the bore at the muzzle. When you carefully tap it in, all the way to the breech, the end will be compressed into a taper or cone if the bore narrows towards the breech and the difference can easily be measured once the stick is removed.
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Hi Philip,
Thank you for asking so many demanding questions in one single post that I have to work my way thru them step by step, so please forgive my being slow!!!
As to this quotation: according to my experience, it would be quite unusual to expect a tapering bore with a narrowed powder breech after ca. 1430. As I stated, though, your idea of testing the bore using balsa wood is just brilliant! Furthermore we should keep in mind that many medieval bores involuntarily deviate quite a bit from exactitude up to ca. 1500.
Actually, quite a lot of early barrels seem to have been re-bored on the occation of their re-use during the Thirty Years War (by the latest).
Best, and please do keep driving me to my limits,
Michael