Damascus barrels and non-Damscus Barrels

[Dave K]

In all the guns I have seen and I certainly have not seen them all, it appears as if all the fowlers  and SxS shotguns prior to about 1810 are rarely Damascus. I can't help but wonder why they then went to it. It is more expensive to make these barrels. We all know that Damascus is a very old practice in metal work, just surprised about it in barrel making.

[smart dog]

Hi Dave,
I think part of the problem is that most of us use the term "Damascus" barrel kind of loosely.  I am not sure any barrels made by Europeans regardless of age were real Damascus steel.  That process disappeared from the Middle East sometime in the 18th century. There were all kinds of pattern welded barrels made and many before 1810.  Twigg, Mortimer, the Mantons, Nock, Egg all made fowlers with patterned welded barrels in the last quarter of the 18th century.  Many were called "stub wist" and were made (I believe) from horseshoe nails.  Of course, continental gunmakers used pattern welded and twisted wire barrels for many years, particularly on fancy rifles.  During the 17th and 18th centuries Spanish and Portugese steel barrels were probably the best in the world.  Many English gunsmith made fowlers for clients using those Spanish barrels.  They were highly prized.  I don't think any of the pattern welded barrels at the time were superior to the Spanish barrels in any way and the twist pattern was really just an expensive cosmetic feature, although there is no question that stub twist barrels were excellent.  Later in the 19th century, steel became much more widely available and I'll bet barrel makers increased their production of pattern welded barrels because they could get the steel to add to the soft iron more cheaply.  They could then gratify the demand for pretty pattern welded barrels at a lower cost.  Hence, more fowler barrels were pattern welded.   Anyway, that is my speculative answer to your question.  Of course I could be way off the mark.

dave
 

[Dave K]

Dave, yes I know you are correct on the terminology, I should have been more exact with my question. If I would have said composite barrels, I am not sure I would have been understood. That word would have covered all of the laminate, twist and Damascus barrels that I was thinking of. The guestion really concerns some of the guns I have owned and one now that I am working on now. These guns were all either French or Belgium from the time period of 1780-1820. They certainly do not appear to be composite barrels at all. I am not sure if the word fluid steel would be correct here, for I am referring to barrels that have no apparent composite construction. I have also seen many single barreled fowlers that are even earlier and they do not show this composite type of barrel either. I do have a gun that the barrels are marked  "Harcourt Ipswich" with the locks marked Manton that does have twist barrels and my guess is this gun was made close to the 1830's or even later. Were these early non-composite barrels made much as the rifle barrels and then machined much thinner rifle barrels? I can't help but wonder why the change to composite barrels as I would think they would be much more expensive to make, though I think they are eye candy.

Dave......Thanks so much for the response.

[doug]

      Damascus (modern usage) barrels were made to get around brittleness in the barrels and they were used for both shotguns and rifles in Europe.  The ability to accurately control carbon and silicon did not come until 1854 with the bessemer process and the control of phosphorous content was late 1870s.  I doubt that the barrels prior to then were fluid steel but rather a fine grained wrought iron.  Unless I am mistaken there was quite a high failure rate for barrels during proof, before the composite barrels.  Still significant afterwards but not as high for the composite barrels.

cheers Doug

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I have a flint fowler with a Ketland lock and the barrel engraved "something London" right at the breech.  The bottom of the barrel has STUBS TWISTED stamped into it, and it's clean enough to see the pattern of the welds.  They start about 1 3/8" wide at the breech and get narrower as they aproach the muzzle, down to less than 3/8" wide.
According to "The Art of the Gunmaker", The heads of the horseshoe nails which had sustained continuous percussion contact with the cobble stone streets in European cities, were collected and purchased by barrel makers, who forged them into bars and then into barrels.  They were considered superior in strength and longevity over plain wrought iron barrels.  As with most of these old pieces, they have been handled for several centuries, and the barrels where the metal is exposed is a lovely uniform brown.  This hides the weld pattern for the most part, but the barrel in the forend is still clean and shows the pattern.  Such is this piece.

[Dave K]

The barrels I am playing with now are 1 3/4" across the breechs and 1 3/8" across the muzzles. This is very neat that your barrels have the mark "stubs twisted". Does the English markings give you an idea of when they were made? Does it appear as if the barrels were sold originally white or do you think they were browned, when the gun was sold.

Well, studying the 20ga. SxS gun I am about to work on, I found a mark I had not seen before on these barrels  and in a place, I had not ever seen before. On the left barrel, the typical Belgium ELG in a circle with a very small star at the bottom of this circle in the circle. This mark is on the left side of the barrel about an 1 1/2" in front of the vent. Never seen a mark on the side of the barrels before. Other marks on both barrel bottoms are an HL or maybe it is an HI.  Also on the bottom of the right barrel is what appears to be either a 32 or a 52. One thing that amazes me, is how close the vents are from the very end of the breech end of the barrels. The center of the vents are only 7/16" from the very end

[Chuck Burrows]

Damascus (modern usage)

While we may consider it modern usage when denoting pattern welded, the term Damascus was used in the 18th Century to denote pattern welded - the book L'art du Coutlier (The Art of the Cutler) by Perret fro the 1780's uses the term in that sense and notes the difference between pattern welded and wootz....
Pattern welding is very old as well - at least as old as wootz (a type of crucible steel) - it was used at least as far back as the Indo-European Migration era.....

[doug]

      the HL initials are most likely the barrel maker's initials.  I am not sure what the numbers are as they do not appear to be the guage.  Also a bit surprising that the elg is not on both barrels.  Preumably they were tested after joining.

       the pounding of the horses hooves was supposed to drive out the impurities in the iron hence the use of the nail stubbs in making barrel skelps.  The nails were gathered into a bundle by an iron band with more nails being driven in until the whole wad was a tight mass that would not come apart during heating.  The bundle was heated white hot and forge welded into a single mass and drawn out into a skelp

cheers mooncoon

[Dave K]

I have another 20ga. SxS flinter that I thought could possibly be French. But after getting this one and seeing all the things that are so much virtually identical between the guns, I think now that gun I beleived to have been French, is instead Belgium. Both gun barrels have the same HL marks on them. But only the one has the ELG. Maybe the French bought their barrels from Belgium, but I really think they are just Belgium guns. Both barrels though, show no sign of any pattern to the steel at all, just like a fluid barrel would look.

[millsman]

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

[doug]

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

     Bizarre; they are not able to sell into Canada and I would have to go through Gunnerman books to buy a copy.  He did not give the actual reason but I am assuming US export laws.

cheers Doug

[Dphariss]

      the HL initials are most likely the barrel maker's initials.  I am not sure what the numbers are as they do not appear to be the guage.  Also a bit surprising that the elg is not on both barrels.  Preumably they were tested after joining.

       the pounding of the horses hooves was supposed to drive out the impurities in the iron hence the use of the nail stubbs in making barrel skelps.  The nails were gathered into a bundle by an iron band with more nails being driven in until the whole wad was a tight mass that would not come apart during heating.  The bundle was heated white hot and forge welded into a single mass and drawn out into a skelp

cheers mooncoon

I suspect that the reason it made better iron was that it was in small pieces and as a result many impurities burnt off in the furnace.
These were melted (according to W. Greener's "The Gun" 1835) the ratio of 15 pounds of steel (coach springs clipped into small pieces) to 25 pounds of cleaned stubs. they would put 42 pounds into the furnace to end up with 40 pounds of iron. Then a rod made of the previous melt was used to gather a "bloom". This is then hammered and then rolled into a bar of the desired thickness.

Greener would know I guess.

He also stated that the barrel welders forge contains 200 pounds or more of coal and several low grade barrels would be welded to get the fire right then they would weld high quality barrels.
He has a chapter on stub twist and another on stub damascus.
This book (not the Gun and Its Developement by W.W. Greener) is available for down load from google books. Or was anyway. Its hard to find sometimes since the W.W. Greener book keeps coming up, in my searches anyway.
Dan

[Dave K]

I am very familiar with composite or twist and Damascus barrels. The barrels on these 2 guns have no visual look to them of being any of the three barrel types I mentioned. They appear to be fluid or fluid like. Much as you see even on rifles of the period. Though, there is no evidence of them have been welded together like the hand forged barrels of the period. I have often wondered when the use of composite barrels became very commone place. After about 1815, I can't recall ever seeing a shotgun that was not composite barreled until you get much later in the century.

[Dphariss]

The good "damascus" barrels were stronger and wore better at least the harder mixes did.  Remember that high carbon steel was added (about 1/3 of the total was old coach springs) to the nail stubs. See "The Sporting Rifle and its Projectiles" James Forsythe for his views on barrels for rifles in rough service abroad.
The increased amount of heating, hammering and welding tended to clean the material so it welded better and made the barrels stronger. IF the welds were all good, the skill of the workman was critical as was the state of the fire. Greener states that this was the reason they welded low grade barrels, for export many times, till the fire was suitable for doing high quality barrels.
By the last of the 19th century the best English machine made "damascus" barrels were as strong +- as Whitworth steel barrels.  These barrels were better than the early 19th century damascus I am sure, but the early barrels were still stronger than plain iron barrels. Both were welded, one just had a lot more work in it making the metal cleaner ans stronger. The iron as it came from the furnace was pretty dirty stuff. Lots of inclusions and the low end barrels had a LOT of inclusions. See "Colonial Frontier Guns" by Hamilton. Its amazing these barrels did not burst more often than they did.
The cheaper grades of damascus were not as strong and these, used on cheap import shotguns in the late 19th century, are one of the things that gave "damascus" barrels a bad reputation when used with smokeless powder shot shells.

Dan