Uploaded January 2015 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Ever since I made my first air cannon, I have wanted to put rifling into my metal barrels. For this video, I made a rifling reamer and rifled a 6 foot piece of 1/2 inch copper pipe, giving me a cal .565 four groove rifled barrel. This new barrel was mounted on my fire extinguisher tank and solenoid valve air cannon. Ammunition was my usual cast lead slugs. Range was the usual 10 meters. In the first test, the target is a piece of sheet aluminium scrap. Several shots were fired, if the slugs are stabilized, they will all travel nose first and make round holes. The first three shots made one large ragged hole, so I aimed a fourth shot lower and got a round hole. This barrel is very accurate. Firing pressure was 250 psi for the sheet aluminium test. Next target was a remote control for a TV. I would never use this as a cannon target due to it's small size, but this new barrel is accurate. The first shot (250 psi) hit it dead center. Then a small water bottle was set up and a hollow point slug was fired (300 psi). Last target was a 2 liter plastic bottle of water, again with a hollow point slug. Firing pressure of 150 psi was insufficient to make the slug expand so it simply passed through doing little damage. Slow motion was recorded at 480 frames\sec. I will definitely be rifling my other barrels as this test was extremely successful.
With this rifling setup, the twist of the rifling is determined by the angle of the flutes on the cutter. Because of the angled flutes, the cutter is self guiding and just needs to be pushed or pulled through the barrel. This particular cutter gives a 1 in 16 twist. The threaded rod is used to pull the cutter through the barrel. The barrel actually rotates with the threaded rod, so I have a bearing in my base plate to allow easy rotation. An electric drill is used to rotate the threaded rod. Lots of cutting oil was squirted into the barrel before rifling it.
Ever since I made my first air cannon, I have wanted to put rifling into my metal barrels. For this video, I made a rifling reamer and rifled a 6 foot piece of 1/2 inch copper pipe, giving me a cal .565 four groove rifled barrel. This new barrel was mounted on my fire extinguisher tank and solenoid valve air cannon. Ammunition was my usual cast lead slugs. Range was the usual 10 meters. In the first test, the target is a piece of sheet aluminium scrap. Several shots were fired, if the slugs are stabilized, they will all travel nose first and make round holes. The first three shots made one large ragged hole, so I aimed a fourth shot lower and got a round hole. This barrel is very accurate. Firing pressure was 250 psi for the sheet aluminium test. Next target was a remote control for a TV. I would never use this as a cannon target due to it's small size, but this new barrel is accurate. The first shot (250 psi) hit it dead center. Then a small water bottle was set up and a hollow point slug was fired (300 psi). Last target was a 2 liter plastic bottle of water, again with a hollow point slug. Firing pressure of 150 psi was insufficient to make the slug expand so it simply passed through doing little damage. Slow motion was recorded at 480 frames\sec. I will definitely be rifling my other barrels as this test was extremely successful.
With this rifling setup, the twist of the rifling is determined by the angle of the flutes on the cutter. Because of the angled flutes, the cutter is self guiding and just needs to be pushed or pulled through the barrel. This particular cutter gives a 1 in 16 twist. The threaded rod is used to pull the cutter through the barrel. The barrel actually rotates with the threaded rod, so I have a bearing in my base plate to allow easy rotation. An electric drill is used to rotate the threaded rod. Lots of cutting oil was squirted into the barrel before rifling it.
