[Jim Watson]

I remember an old gunzine piece showing the S&W drop forge... and a crate marked "Kimber." All these outfits are in cahoots.

 

[Jim Watson]

They also have forged barrels, but the method used for the barrel making is called cold hammer forging,

I wonder how they get the rotary forge past the link lug.
Note that Imbel barrels were two piece with a rifled tube mono bloc into the breech shape.

Smith and Wesson stayed with cut rifled, then broached because the asymmetric revolver barrel would not button evenly.

 

[Jim Watson]

Looks like they hammer forged the rifling and left a large cylindrical lump for the breech section to be milled out of. Or maybe they hammer forged it at the large diameter and did not show the rough turn of the tube. The chamber is conventionally reamed.

SchuemanZ says their barrels are made out of bar stock in a single CNC, no fixturing or handling.
Mr Zita told me it takes about 45 minutes.

 

[Jim Watson]

Here are some examples of hammer forged barrels. First is cut cross section of a .223/5.56mm GI barrel.
Second is a partially forged M-60 barrel which shows the OD of blank before and after forging. Machine had a fault, this was “ half done”.
Last is one of a finished 20 gauge shotgun barrel. Barrel would go to a normalizing oven then OD finishing on a CNC lathe.

Interesting. Notice that they are all circular cross section, no lumps and bumps like a 1911 barrel. You would have funny ID variations if you tried to get close to the finished contour.
The first well known hammer forged barrel was on the Steyr Mannlicher of maybe 40 years ago. It was forged to bore, chamber, and taper. All they did was polish the spiral hammer marks. I think mostly for advertising but there were thoughts they did not want to cut into the stressed material and let it relax and distort.

I read that Ruger had their hammer forge sitting in a corner for a good while before they figured it had become cheaper to make their own barrels instead of buying commodity blanks. A friend was very proud of his Douglas barreled M77 Swift, and justly so, he won more than the price of the gun in sporter benchrest matches before it was shot out.

 

[Jim Watson]

Well, kind'a... That line is formed when the top forging die comes crashing down with the lower forging die. It's a forging. I shared a S&W video above somewhere that shows the drop forged process.

Right, die forging. My 1910 copy of Greener calls that "stamping." (Even now, a sheet metal shape is a "pressing" in the Old World.)