Damascus (Twist) Barrels- Who shoots them?

[Newtire]

Oops,forgot the link to the Damascus info page.

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

 

[Pukka Bundook]

Newtire,
Not exactly.
Rods are twisted together, than beaten into ribbons. Two or three of these are forge welded into a wider ribbon, which in turn are formed around a mandrel, and forge welded into a tube, an inch or two at a time.
This is in in brief.
The Belgian "Bernard twist" uses thinner rod, more like thick wire, but the two and three stripe uses rods.
Stub iron twist has not the same figure as what we call "damascus" but was used throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries, up to say mid century or a bit later.

Newtire,
Our posts crossed, so I have yet to read your link above.

Best ,
Richard.

 

[toot]

I have a dbl 10 gauge, a dbl 8 gauge and a single barrel 6 gauge punt/ market gun, and want to shoot them with the proper loads, can any one give me loads for them on the bottom end? I have been shooting them with 12 gauge loads, fun but no soap, just a bang and smoke.

 

[Pukka Bundook]

Squire Robin,

Who told you you can't rifle Damascus /twist barrels??
Whoever it was had it wrong.

Best,
Richard.

 

[toot]

the two cocks and DBL belong on a calendrer.

 

[Eterry]

Yes, a nice brace of Cocks... these weren't too bad, i had the best time, even if i used a Beretta

 

[robinghewitt]

Who told you you can't rifle Damascus /twist barrels??
Whoever it was had it wrong.

They are not as welded as you think. The blacksmith at Rodmell forge told me how due to iron shortages in WW2 he used to make the Sussex leg crook from old shotgun barrels. He couldn't use damascus barrels because they came unwound when he tried to draw them down to a point.

The Enfield rifle was made from Marshall's iron, expensive crucible steel from Birmingham.

I am not sure about Baker though, his barrels seem to have a single spiral about 3/4" wide.

Henry Bessemer didn't patent his converter until 1851

 

[Pukka Bundook]

Hello Robin,
I don't know about your old blacksmith mate, but twist and Damascus barrels have been rifled for a very long time.
British 19th and even 18th C gunmakers were rifling barrels, (or buying them in ready rifled and finishing them) before anyone thought about steel liners. When you think about it, all Damascus depends on cut away "end grain" to give the pattern. It's just the same in a pattern welded sword.
I can see the old bloke may have had trouble forging Damascus into something else, but folks do make knives from it and no worries.
Re Enfield barrels; Yes good iron, and later, steel.
When you think of all the twist and later Damascus barrels made prior to the 1850's, Very many were rifled and passed proof without any problems at all.
Sometimes on worn examples, the pattern can even be seen on the inside to some degree.

All the very best Robin,
Richard.

 

[robinghewitt]

Hi Richard
I offered three very relevant and verifiable facts plus one interesting anecdote, I previously supplied a picture of a period rifle with a tape wound core and supposed that it showed they were aware of the problems associated with rifling damacus iron. You have nothing.
hugs
Robin

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I have shot grand daddy's LC Smith with Damascus barrels, using black powder shells. For a while some of the modern SxS shotguns being sold in the 1920's -1930's had faux Damascus barrels. They were acid etched to make them look like fancy Damascus steel barrels, when they weren't.... since I couldn't tell, I didn't take the chance.

LD

 

[DickS]

I have one rifle with a Damascus barrel - an English William Richards. It is most definitely rifled and is not lined or sleeved. I have inspected the bore with the breechplug removed, and the bore is smooth, showing no signs of welding pattern.

 

[Zonie]

Rifling in a Damascus barrel? Yes. I have a Belgian single shot pistol with a rifled Damascus barrel. It was made roughly in the 1840-1850 time period.

It is a .50 caliber bore with 11 spiral, shallow rifling grooves and yes, the barrel is actually Damascus, not a phony pattern that was etched onto the outside. I verified this with a small localized acid etch on the underside of the barrel.

 

[Pukka Bundook]

Zonie,
That looks a very nice pistol.

****,
It would be V nice to see your rifle also.

This from an "Essay On Shooting";
(Re the work of William Fullard of Clerkenwell, One of the best barrel makers ever in London. His barrels used by both Mantons amongst others)
"An artist of London, whose superior excellence in this branch is known to all the trade, informs us that he has wrought a great deal of Spanish iron; that he has forged barrels from old scythes, from wire, from needles, and a great many other articles suggested by the whim of his customers;
he has also made barrels with a lining of steel, and formed others with a double spiral of steel and iron alternately; but that, as far as he can determine from these numerous trials, the stub iron wrought into a twisted barrel, is superior to every other.
Wherever steel was employed, he found that the barrel neither welded or bored so perfectly as when iron alone was used".

Best regards,
Richard.

 

[Felix the Cat]

They are not as welded as you think. The blacksmith at Rodmell forge told me how due to iron shortages in WW2 he used to make the Sussex leg crook from old shotgun barrels. He couldn't use damascus barrels because they came unwound when he tried to draw them down to a point.

The Enfield rifle was made from Marshall's iron, expensive crucible steel from Birmingham.

I am not sure about Baker though, his barrels seem to have a single spiral about 3/4" wide.

Henry Bessemer didn't patent his converter until 1851

That's a rather confusing reply, if you don't mind me saying so..

Rifles were made at Enfield from 1816 to 1988. Which "Enfield Rifle" were you referring to? I presume you are talking about the Pattern 1853 rifled musket? This had a barrel made from wrought iron, not steel and was not coiled but forge welded from a single flat strip (or skelp) with a single longitudinal seam. Many P53 rifles were modified into Snider breech loaders, either Mk 1 or Mk 2. Latterly, Mk3 Sniders had barrels made from forged steel.

Crucible steel was made (mostly in Sheffield) in small quantities from blister steel, made by the cementation process (similar to case hardening). This was a high carbon steel usually used for razors and other tools. It was not suitable for barrel making, although it could be used as a component of a laminated barrel. You may be confusing "crucible steel" with "mild steel" which is what was produced by the Bessemer and Siemens processes from cast iron. Mild steel is not really a proper steel, and was really a low carbon substitute for wrought iron.

I don't deny that your friend may have had difficulty trying to work old gun barrels... fire working laminate is never easy, particularly if the laminate is of age as it will have picked up all sorts of oxides and contaminants along the way. Good welding depends on clean metal regardless of the welding method.. You say barrels "were not welded as you think".. what do you mean? Before the development of high temperature gas welding by Fouche and Picard in 1900 the only way welding steel was possible was by raising the temperature to "welding heat" and then hammering the surfaces together to force out the scale that inevitably forms at the joint..

With reference to your original post showing the muzzle of a target rifle, what exactly do you mean by a "strip lined core"? In the late 19th and early 20th century it was common practice to reline barrels. This was done by soldering a tube into a bored out barrel. The only reference to strip lining that I am aware of is a technique of making large calibre gun barrels by wrapping wire or strip around a barrel liner. These techniques were made obsolete in the 1920 by the development of frettage by Krupp and other researchers.

 

[robinghewitt]

Rifles were made at Enfield from 1816 to 1988. Which "Enfield Rifle" were you referring to?

I always like to go to the people who were there. The London Illustrated News went to a factory making Enfield rifle barrels, scratched some excellent engravings of the various processes, rolling the barrels looked very exciting if a bit frantic. They said it was Marshall's iron. Later I saw an excavation of Marshall's factory and they were making crucible steel. The notion that damascus needs to be wrapped around a core is not mine.

 

[Pukka Bundook]

Thank you for the photo of t'other side, Zonie. I bet it feels very comfortable and lines up well!

Best,
R.

 

[Felix the Cat]

I always like to go to the people who were there. The London Illustrated News went to a factory making Enfield rifle barrels, scratched some excellent engravings of the various processes, rolling the barrels looked very exciting if a bit frantic. They said it was Marshall's iron. Later I saw an excavation of Marshall's factory and they were making crucible steel. The notion that damascus needs to be wrapped around a core is not mine.

Ah yes, I know that article.. The whole business of making barrels was, as you say, a bit spectacular and not that healthy for the participants!

I think you are at risk of making two and two equal five in your conclusions of what was happening at Marshall's ironworks. From what I understand, Marshall was mostly a puddler, making wrought iron by the Onions process. They also seem to have had a crucible furnace as this was a follow on process to making wrought iron, but as I said, I would be surprised if the steel made in these furnaces went into Enfield barrels. I can see crucible steel being used in making twisted laminate barrels for the sporting trade, but not for military barrels. There was not the wide choice of alloy steels that came into existence in the following century after the chemistry and metallurgy became better understood. Mostly all you had was cast iron, which was then worked into wrought iron by burning off the carbon, and blister steel made by putting some carbon back into wrought iron by heating in charcoal filled boxes. Crucible steel was simply blister steel melted in ceramic pots at the highest temperature they could achieve. The limiting factor was the ability of the crucible to stand the heat. The crucibles only held a few pounds of metal and could only survive a couple of firings. It was not actually possible to melt large quantities of most steel alloys until the beginning of the 19th C. the best you could achieve was a pasty mass for forging etc..

You need to be a bit careful about using articles from publications like the LIN which was always more of a public entertainment than an academic journal. I am sure the writer meant well, but would not have spent that much time ensuring his copy was technically accurate. Better references can be found in more obscure academic and engineering publications, but much of this information was treated as private commercial secrets at the time, and hence very difficult to authenticate. There was no real definitive terms for sub types of metal, and many materials were known more by who made them rather than absolute chemical or physical characteristics.

We still see echoes of this in terms such as Babbett metal, Gunmetal, Stubb's Silver Steel ( "Drill Rod" in the states). There is not actually a technical difference between "Brass" and "Bronze" as many alloys contain both copper, tin and zinc..!

I suppose what I am saying is that it is probably pointless to make definitive statements about metals produced before the 1920s. Much of what was produced in those days was dependant on the skill and judgement of those making the objects at the time, with much emphasis on trusted sources of supply. It is only comparatively recently that engineers and designers have been able to specify and select standard materials based on more scientific assays and testing regimes. There are many however who say that there is much in material science we have still to discover...!

 

[robinghewitt]

But if I didn't pontificate it would be much to easy to ignore me
Marshall may have puddled, he may have been selective when buying his iron but that is so easy to test for, all I have to do is acid etch a Minie barrel and any slag inclusion will become immediately apparent. Puddled iron is pure iron with a slag inclusion, can we agree on that?
We are having this discussion because I have a percussion rifle with pattern welded iron over a tape wound core. You suggest I have been caught out by a sleeved bore, that is simply not so. I got the rifle from MLAGB founder member Peter Asquith who was selling up after getting the hard word from the doc. Peter was buddies with Rex Holbrook and the rifle has a set of Holbrook sights. My shooting buddy Gordon got there before me and picked up a sleeved Rigby, the sleeving was beautifully done but so obvious I am 100% sure my barrel is not sleeved.
The rifle is top quality, Peter said he showed it to de Witt Bailey who remarked it looked like, "the kind of thing the Victorians took up to Scotland to shoot at deer from 400 yards". I was not expecting to find anything other than damascene when I browned the muzzle, I spent a long while staring at it before I conceded it was a slag free tape wound core.
If you want to disagree look at the picture and come up with a better explanation.
If you have no better explanation, why do I have the only one?

 

[Jason Lewis]

Maybe I missed this in a previous post but, can someone explain what a tape wound core is? I’m unfamiliar with the term.

 

[Felix the Cat]

Robin, we are having this discussion because you claim that "you can't rifle a Damascus barrel" and have posted a picture of the crown of a clearly laminated barrel with Henry rifling as your evidence of this. I would not wish to impugn the reputation of either the late Peter Asquith or for that matter De Witt.. but please stop moving the goalposts. As you will know from the Metford letters, relining target barrels was a common procedure in the 1890s, this is all I was saying..

Whilst it is undoubtedly true that "twisted laminate" barrels were mostly used for making shotguns, they were used for rifles as well. Your example is, I agree, an interesting example of what is an unusual form of lamination, but this is hardly hard evidence that "it is impossible to rifle laminated barrels". I have a rifled percussion pistol with twist laminate barrels which does not have any form of additional lining!

As I keep saying, it is difficult to be precise about 19thC metal because it varies so much, however wrought iron made by puddling will almost always have slag inclusions. They have a very low carbon content, but describing them as "pure iron" is not metallurgically true. Wrought iron has loads of impurities in it, both good and bad. It is the silicon in wrought iron that makes it so resistant to corrosion! EN1 mild steel is actually purer Fe than most wrought iron! You can also usually spot wrought iron barrels as they often have a pock marked appearance if they have been subject to any sort of corrosion. The original P53 Enfield muzzle loaders were all made from wrought iron. Enfield only switched to steel barrels for the Mk 3 Snider (which are all stamped "Steel"). As I am sure you will know, it is difficult to be precise about a metal sample without doing a mass spectromatic analysis to find out the chemistry, and a microscopic examination of a "polish and etch" sample to look at the grain structure..!

The OP's question was that "is it safe to shoot Damascus barrels". My view is that it depends on the condition of the firearm, and what is being shot. A sound barrel with the correct charge and projectile should not pose an unreasonable risk IMO.

Or are you saying that shooting laminate barrel rifles should not be done?