"David Billington" wrote in message
...
On 24/10/2019 02:44, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"David Billington" wrote in message
...
On 23/10/2019 10:58, Steve W. wrote:
Anyone got a site or place where there are plans or drawings that
show something like a sine bar machine or other style that
wouldn't
be that hard to build?

Am thinking of building a flintlock or percussion rifle all from
scratch.
An interesting question, I remember when I grew up in the US in
the
1970s seeing a film several times of a working museum, in
Pennsylvania?, that preserved the techniques for making long
rifles,
Kentucky?, and the main detail was about the rifling technique and
mechanics used It didn't look high tech just required a bit of
work
to produce the master screw which governed the rifling cutter.

The slow, tedious, manual method of gun making prompted several
early
inventors to create automation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas...hard_(inventor)

Similarly in England at the Portmouth blocks mills
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Block_Mills .


The ideas underlying the Industrial Revolution were originally French,
but England and then America provided more productive environments for
their development. AFAICT automation was suppressed elsewhere to
protect traditional jobs but that may not be the whole answer.

An engineer from India who resented the USA and Europe's domination of
the modern world asked me why Europe had suddenly surged ahead of
everyone else, particularly India and China, and I couldn't fully
answer him.