[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Found a page with a few methods of casting a barrel for you. As it turns out, people were using a technique that makes decent gun barrels in India long before guns became a thing.

The audio quality isn't the best, but, here's a video of one of these techniques being used with modern equipment.

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

And what special skills are required?

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Looks like you'll have plenty of manual labor for the large number of people in need of a job, and you can use multiple techniques to make multiple types of gun.

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

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

If rifling is known to some of the gunsmiths the PCs brought in, it may or may not be possible for somebody with sufficient skill to work the grooves into your molds, allowing for at least a few good marksman.

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

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

As for what kinds of guns to make? Muskets are simple, rifles if skill checks go well,

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.

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

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

and a few blunderbusses/shotguns can work for anybody. While the shotguns won't be killing many military men in full plate, they still stop the occasional bandit, wild animal, or anybody else not wearing significant armor.

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

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

It also doesn't hurt that you don't have to make proper ammo for them, as rocks and broken glass work just fine.

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.

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.