The Gast gun was invented by Karl Gast, a German, during January 1916. He was working for the Vorwerk Company at this time. Karl Gast’s solution to the heating and jamming issues was, rather than using one gun, his idea was to combine two barrels and two actions into a single firearm. They only found out about it in 1921. Incidentally, Karl Gast had also applied for a US patent in 1920 and finally received it in 1923. The US Army got interested in the design and evaluated one. However, this variation of the Gast gun never reached the production stage. Even though there were several riots, this method was used by several manufacturers because of its suitability for mass production of musket barrels. This method of manufacture was severely opposed by the welding workers associations, as they saw it as a threat to their livelihood. Plans were also made to manufacture a variant that fired 13×92 mm.

While design and building plans are freely available for various types of wooden toys, basic woodworking skills and a flair for creativity are two requirements to taste success. The description gives the impression that the product can be in one of two states: reached PMF or failed to do so. The original EDM process was invented in 1943 by two Russian scientists, Dr. B.R. Now we will study another modern rifling method called Electric Discharge Machining, otherwise commonly known as EDM. In modern times, a person specializing in making and fitting horses shoes is called a farrier, but in the middle ages, the job of the farrier and the blacksmith were practically synonymous and the terms were used interchangeably. Making these barrels was labor intensive and expensive and hence this technique was used to manufacture barrels for the finest sporting guns of that period. There was no specific reason to prefer iron from horse-shoe nails, merely that a majority of the early barrel-makers just happened to be the same blacksmiths that dealt with making horse shoes and fitting them.

The blacksmiths of Italy and Spain that made the early gunbarrels usually used iron from old horse-shoe nails. We also talked about how the early barrel makers were blacksmiths. This sheet is rolled into a thin tube that is the length of the barrel and slightly smaller than the required barrel diameter. This tube is called a chemise. The long beak is used to turn and press the strip on to the chemise. To roll it around the chemise, they use a pair of tongs where one beak is short and flat and the other is rounded and long. Since it is hard to make a barrel from a single ruban, the smith often made three of these separately, each one foot long, and then welded them together into a single three-foot long barrel. This method produced a barrel of superior strength, as the welds were transverse to the barrel and could better resist the force of explosion. This method is also sometimes called spark machining, spark eroding or wire erosion.

This strip is called a ruban (i.e.) a “ribbon”. Another method of barrel manufacturing also became popular in France in the late 1700s. Barrels produced by this method were called Canon a Ruban or “Ribbon barrel”. To form a barrel of a certain length, multiple cylinders are selected and arranged end to end and welded together to form the barrel. The mandrel was then removed and this barrel would be passed between rollers with tapered grooves to lengthen the barrel, the edges being welded as the barrel passed through the rolls. Another method that became popular in the early 1800s in Birmingham, was to roll a thick barrel out of a short strip of iron wound round a mandrel. Also note the striping on the barrel showing the grain of the ribbon twisted around the chemise. Then a thicker strip of iron about an inch broad and chamfered to a point on either edge is heated a few inches at a time and wound around the chemise. Then the barrel is sent to the boring shop, where the chemise (the lining) is mostly removed using a boring bit, leaving behind the ruban forming the barrel.

Each barrel and action were fed by a separate drum magazine. By switching the magazine with an ammunition belt and mounting it on a tripod, it became a very good medium machine gun. TuF ammunition with curved box magazines. It was also easy to change the ammunition drums and an experienced operator could do this within a few seconds. Each of these drums held 180 rounds of 7.92×57 mm. Because each barrel would fire alternately, this could easily achieve firing rates of 1600 rounds per minute without overheating or jamming issues. Also, if one of the cylinders has cracks or weld defects during its forging process, it can simply be discarded and another one substituted in place, when joining all the cylinders together to make a new barrel. The method used in Spain was to weld a bunch of nails into a strip of iron and then bend this into a cylinder about 5-6 inches in length.