Test Barrel Proof Testing

Interesting results we obtained! Some key takeaways from this testing: -It’s not about how much powder is behind the ball (or shot) it’s about how much weight is in front of your powder charge to achieve the maximum chamber pressures. -Ensure your welding surfaces are clean, use a quality flux, and don’t work your metal too much cooler than a welding heat. (I intentionally left the surfaces dirty and used cheap flux to see what kind of results we would get. I had no doubts of the strength of the spiral wrap barrel because it had more than double the amount of welding heats than any other method, but was surprised to see that what is normally considered a “fully developed weld” (3 or more welding heats) failed in two instances. It may have been that when I formed the octagon and hexagon cross sections I worked the metal too cold (I worked down to a full orange heat at lowest) and placed too much stress on the welds.)