[madmike]

Okay, here's what I have:

2 barrel sections, 7/8" octagon, 12" long, bored and rifled .32 cal, that someone cut off rifles when making carbines. HEAVY.

Lathe, mill, heat-treating furnace, assorted tools. Experience assembling and fitting shotguns from parts and doing minor repair and tuning of pistols and rifles, and 20 years experience as a knifemaker and bladesmith.

Here's what I want to do:

Bore them out to make flintlock dueling pistols.

Boring, turning, refinishing, stocking and fitting locks is no problem.

questions:

they're bored through. I need to fit closed breeches to them. Will 4140 Chrome/moly threaded to fit work? Threaded to what dia and pitch? How thick a breech?

I've seen .45 cal done on blanks this size. Is that the maximum practical, or is .50 or .54 possible?

Most repros are rifled. Were most originals?

What's a nice design to style them after? I'm open to suggestions, as long as they look nice and are relatively correct for the period.

thanks