[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Icelander

How much work is involved in making a firearm like a musket and caliver apart from casting the barrel?

You'll need a stock and a firing mechanism.

Originally Posted by Icelander

And what special skills are required?

The hard part is a decent firing mechanism, and you appear to have that covered.

Originally Posted by Icelander

How much of this is labour that can make use of untrained people or artisans from quite different disciplines?

Gathering wood to make a stock can be done by nearly anybody, just about anybody can gather clay or sand for molds, and watchmakers could probably be taught how to make something similar to a wheel-lock.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Rifling is known, but from all I can gather, it is much more time-consuming to make rifles than smoothbore barrels.

Thus is why you make relatively few of them. Save those for somebody who appears to have some Talent for rifles.

Originally Posted by Icelander

I think that making a rifled barrel from bronze would be suboptimal. The rifling needs to be hard enough not to be worn out by repeated fire, after all.

You did say steel was possible to melt. Save it for rifles, not muskets. Possibly good for cannons, though.

Originally Posted by Icelander

I think rifled barrels are steel and probably were even at TL4 (if perhaps less uniform quality steel).

I don't doubt that.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Blunderbusses are present on the naval ships for boarding actions and may be indicated for shock cavalry.

Faster methods of producing them are always a good thing.

Originally Posted by Icelander

I doubt many people are improvident enough to spend $10 on smokepowder to shoot $0.00-0.1 rocks or broken glass at wild animals, driving them away, when slings can do the same job much cheaper.

Sometimes you can't afford the time it takes to use a sling, vs the point and kill of a blunderbuss. It's inefficient, but, it beats dying.

Originally Posted by Icelander

An ounce of shot will cost around $1-2 locally, which means that anyone able to afford a shotgun and powder will be able to afford the shot. On the other hand, smokepowder is not likely to be sold to private citizens any time soon, due to the wartime needs of the PCs and their merchant house. The only firearms made locally will be ones made to fill their orders.

Shot has weight, however. Rocks and broken glass tend to be readily available, and glass changes the damage type to Cutting. One should never assume that you will always have proper ammo on hand, especially when using weapons intended to be loaded with random crap.