Thanks for the suggestion fellas, but I do not know anyone that I could even ask. No one I know has a lathe or access to one. But have no fear my friends, I am the King of Rube Goldberg operations! As you will soon see, my confabulation worked pretty dang good!
I went to hardware store this morning (don't worry, I wore a mask) to see what I could come up with to turn this barrel round. Here's what I came up with.
It's a piece of 5/16" threaded rod (my grandfather always called it "All-Thread") that I cut to just fit under my small drill press. I used 2 really dense nylon spacers that are tapered on the ends, to fit into the barrel and center it on the rod. All of it held together with flat washers and Nylock nuts, double nutted to keep them from backing off. That's it. I chucked it in the drill press, and used various files and emory papers to turn it round. It took several hours to get it this far, but it's almost there. Here it is after today's session on the drill press.
I know it's not ideal, and some of you are probably cringing. But It's getting the job done.
I went ahead and put some cold blue on the parts, just to see where everything is at. I think it looks pretty good so far. Lots of detail work yet, but the project is well under way. Plus the blue will help me when the sanding and filing starts again tomorrow.
Thus far, all of the original Navy Arms and Gregorelli & Uberti markings are still on the gun. I don't know if that will change or not. I also ordered a set of small letter and number stamps. I'm going to number it up like an original.
