The Making of a Spiral Welded Damascus Gun Barrel

[Dixie Gunsmithing]

Below is a link to a YouTube video some of you may like. It's not a shotgun barrel, but the process is the same.

The Making of a Spiral Welded Damascus Gun Barrel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7eacS2oDcs

[4V50 Gary]

Thanks. Watching it now.

Interesting way he does the twisting of the steel. There's a trip hammer like the one he uses at the Mining Museum in Walsenburg, CO. They didn't know what they had until I told them.

[Jim Watson]

Interesting. Imagine the work it takes to make a 30" barrel.

[mete]

Yes and if yo really know your stuff you put your companies logo in the damascus pattern !!!

[James K]

Remington did.

I once knew an old gentleman who did make barrels that way, but he had very little of the machinery that man has. I seem to recall that he used a lot thinner bars, though, which were not nearly as hard to work and bent easily around the mandrel when white hot, almost like soft chocolate bars.

An old friend, now gone, Bill Moran, did some nice Damascus work, though he worked only on knives, not on gun barrels.

Jim

[DT Guy]

Jim, you knew Bill Moran?

He was a legend-Ken Warner credited him as the man who 'rediscovered' pattern welded steel.

Wow.


Larry

[Dixie Gunsmithing]

Jim, they did use thinner material, from what history I've read that also supplied drawings and photos. They also used heavy gauge steel wire. At one time, mainly in Belgium, there were several different ways of making Damascus barrels, and a few of those were what came here. If I recall, several US manufacturers bought their barrels, or barrel stock, from these Belgium manufacturers, before some started making their own. I can't remember where I read about this, but I think it might have been a webpage from a Belgium historian. There are several of these websites, and they are very educational.

Below is a link to one website on it, along with three links to downloadable books from WW Greener.

http://www.damascus-barrels.com/index.html

Gunnery in 1858:

https://archive.org/details/gunneryin1858bei00greerich

The science of gunnery:

https://archive.org/details/sciencegunnerya01greegoog

The gun:

http://books.google.com/books?id=oIE...k_similarbooks

[James K]

Yes, I knew Bill Moran well, and the man who wrote the book, Wayne Holter, was an old and very good friend.

One of the points about Damascus was that it was not one material. They started out as rods of iron and steel, which were heated white hot and twisted together. Then they were hammered into rods of a square or rectangular section before being heated again and wrapped around the mandrel. Upsetting, as is shown in the video, was done to the breech part, but the forward part was usually just welded together by pounding the white hot strips.

One of the problems is that even the best welding left tiny gaps between the strips, and over the years, corrosion from primers and black powder was forced into those gaps, corroding the barrels from inside. I have sectioned some old Damascus barrels (admittedly not of high quality) and found the inside a mass of black and orange rust, sort of like orange lace. One of those barrels let go and took parts of three of the owner's fingers along for the ride.

Rifle barrels are generally thicker so the main danger comes from shotgun barrels. And part of the reason for that is the different pressure curves between black powder and smokeless. Black powder has a quick ignition and a rapid drop-off of pressure, which means the pressure is mainly contained in the thicker part of the barrel. Smokeless powder, even if the maximum pressure is no higher, is progressive burning, meaning that pressure remains high out to the point where the barrel thins down, which is right where the shooter's off hand is positioned.

Some people will insist that Damascus (twist) barrels are OK, even that they are stronger than solid steel barrels, and often will point out that they passed proof tests, even though that was when the gun was new over a century ago. One man claims he has fired thousands of Magnum shells from his English double gun, with no problem. All I can say is that I do not recommend it.

I trust the above might show that even though some of those guns were strong when new, they might not stand up to firing today, even with black powder loads.

Jim

[Dixie Gunsmithing]

Jim, I'm sure you have seen plenty of pictures of Damascus shotgun barrels coming undone from shooting smokeless loads in them, and may have seen some actual guns as I have. It is foolish to put smokeless cartridges in Damascus barreled shotguns. One might hold together for a few rounds, but I've seen some that one round was all it took to un-twist the thing. What I could never see, is putting smokeless cartridges into a rare and expensive Damascus double, unless one was well off enough to have money to burn.

My Elsie has armor steel barrels, and I wont shoot anything but lower pressure rounds in it. Its simply worth too much to take a chance on ruining it, even though it would most likely easily handle regular game loads.

[Jim Watson]

Some of Our British Cousins have had good quality Damascus or other twist barrels reproofed, not depending on a century old nitro proof. Then they shoot them. Any reports of barrels coming untwisted from the Vintagers?

[Dixie Gunsmithing]

There's several photos at the doublegunshop.com forum, of what can happen, and several are ruptures close to the forcing cone. However, its always blamed on reloads or mistakes, but it could have just been the barrels time to go, even with a normal load of powder. Below is a link to one of them, and they are looking at reloads causing it.


http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/...56377&page=all

[Jim Watson]

I have seen a couple shot routinely - one with black, one with a carefully formulated nitro load - and one on the wall of My Neighbor The Gunsmith's Shop with a plug blown out of the left barrel right at left thumb position.

I will discuss the subject and even play Devil's Advocate, but not shoot the gun.

We need to get Slamfire involved. He will tell us why not to shoot Damascus no matter the state of proof.

[James K]

Barrels made of good quality steel can burst, too, if subject to high enough pressures. Usually, though, steel barrels stretch and bulge before bursting and show a "balloon" effect. Damascus barrels, being made partly (often mostly) of iron, tend to simply blow out, with very little bulging or bending. Think pressure applied to a chocolate bar vs pressure applied to peanut brittle. Each will give way, but will act differently in doing so.

Note that the type of fracture caused by excess (for the material) pressure is different from the fracture caused by a bullet or shot charge stopped by an obstruction, where the heat dump of the kinetic energy softens the barrel, a condition that doesn't exist in a barrel blown by excess pressure.

Jim

[DT Guy]

I think it's difficult to generalize about damascus barrels, since each one is essentially unique; it's not like a mill-run steel blank that's drilled for a standard barrel, but an individual creation of forging.

I'd suspect that you could take five twist barrels, made by the same process, of the same materials and by the same people, and find significant variations from one to the next.


Larry

[hartcreek]

Hmmmm and I was planning on using my 150 year old damascus 16 gage for turkey season next year.....maybe I will rethink that and just use my Marlin model 19 instead......

[James K]

There used to be a fellow on another site who chimed in every time there was a mention of Damascus barrels. He said he had his reamed out and shot it all the time with Magnum smokeless loads, often saying the same thing about their commonly being re-proved in England. He did acknowledge that some might be weak due to the passage of time, but insisted that the good ones were much stronger than solid steel barrels.

I thought (and think) that he was, at best, foolish and giving advice that could result in serious injury if followed. I heard the same nonsense from a person who called himself a gunsmith at a gun store. I spoke with him and the owner for a few minutes and never went back; I didn't want to be around a couple of fools who seemed intent on blowing up their customers.

Jim

[Dixie Gunsmithing]

Forge welding can have porosity in the welded seams, and higher pressures than the barrel was designed for, can cause these to rupture, especially over time. Also, the metal in these barrels would have to have a yield strength high enough to handle the increased pressure. If a metal is brittle, like iron, then it wont bulge, it just bursts. However, steel, which is more ductile, will bulge when the yield is reached, before it bursts. Thus, the forcing cone would be the best place for a failure, as the shot column is being forced and squeezed into the barrel proper under high pressure. On old steel, or under-designed barrels using steel, you'll get a bulge and maybe a split around the cone, but iron barrels, they will just burst out in fragments.

[James K]

As a matter of personal experience, I once had a man come in with an old Damascus barrel double gun he wanted checked out. I told him that it was unsafe to fire with anything, at which point he informed me that "his great granddaddy, granddaddy, daddy, and he had all fired that gun with no problems and that he routinely used 2 3/4" Magnum shells (the gun had 2 1/2" chambers).

I repeated my warning, to which he repeated that the gun was safe.

About a month later, he came in with his left hand in a heavy bandage. I asked how many. He replied two and part of another [fingers he had lost]. He looked a bit sheepish and admitted that he should have listened to me. In some cases, I like being proved right, but in that case I would have been happy to have been wrong.

Jim

[Dixie Gunsmithing]

Jim,

On the ones I've seen, doubles with beavertail forearms seem to not cause as much harm to the shooter, when the chamber/cone area bursts, as the ones with splinter forearms. One would think they would burst all around, ripping away wood, but about all I've seen, they burst right at the wood line. Though, with even beavertail types, a hand can be damaged by some wood being blown away, but with the splinter type, there is nothing really there to absorb some of it. I have noticed a few not acting this way, but it seems that the majority did, as if the wood actually kept the barrel from failing more than it could have at the bottom. I'm not sure if it is due to the fit of the wood being tighter to the barrel on these, or what. Did you notice this on the ones you have seen?

On cheaper guns, with snap-on forearms, I've seen photos of these of where they just blow the forearm down and off. I'm not sure on the injuries on these either.

[mete]

In my metallurgist's mind a crack even if tiny is a failure. I don't play word games like some. The smaller the crack and lower the forces the longer time to catastrophic failure but the first crack is still the failure.
The old steels have lots of places to fail , welds , corrosion, inclusions , etc . A thorough test with modern methods would be long and costly for sure. They should be retired with honor , not blown to pieces.