Since I was gawking at Sherline mini-lathes, I had to wonder how to do the rifling. (Well, the mini-lathe might be able to turn down a handgun barrel....) Apparently it's pretty tricky, as one might expect.
One good overview is by a guy at Border Barrels, a manufacturer in the UK, where he details cut rifling, button rifling, and hammer rifling. (The first version I came across was an archived version online.) Apparently cut rifling is superior. I thought hammer rifling would be best, because the mandrel can be made to precise tolerances, but apparently the work stress due to hammering is a problem.
Krieger Barrels' website also has a bit on barrel-making, as well as an interesting article on cleaning and breaking in.
Actually, a mill would be more useful to me than a lathe, and probably learning how to weld sheet metal would be even more useful to me than being able to mill. It'd be interesting to be able to finish 80% AR-15 receivers, though....
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