I am looking for information on how twist Damascus barrels were made. Surely there is some information out there somewhere since so many old shotgun barrels were made this way. But, I haven’t been able to find anything that describes the process used by the manufacturers. Does anyone know where I can find a book describing the making of these barrels, patent office documents, factory process papers, etc.?
I don’t know if this is what you want, but patent 5,185,044 by Pendray and Verhoeven in 1993 outlines a method for making Damascus steel for swords. It references many works on Damascus steel as well. In the reading I did on it, it makes me wonder if barrels were never really true Damascus steel, but pattern welded Damascus steel instead. They claimed the method for making Damascus was lost 200 years ago, obviously pre-dating the making of most shotguns we still see around. It’s a little confusing, but if the barrels were pattern welded instead, it may help you get the answers you need. Wikipedia has a short interesting entry on pattern welding that sounds much more likely to be the way a barrel could be made and looks like Damascus, in fact referred to as “pattern welded Damascus”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_welding
http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/f_quest/steel.htm – talks about pattern welded Damascus steelhttp://www.crandart.co.uk/damasteel.htm – these guys make 3 different kinds of Damascus steel, and make just damn near anything you want out of it. Yes, even a golf club.
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It is pattern welded Damascus steel barrels that I am looking for information on. I know Al Pendray and the Damascus that he got the patent on is “wootz” Damascus. Wootz Damascus gets its pattern from the carbide lattice in the steel. The barrels that I have seen were all pattern welded Damascus.
I am a custom knife maker besides being a gunsmith. I make my own pattern welded Damascus steel for my knife blades, so I am familiar with the process of making the steel. My main question here is, how exactly did they shape the steel into a barrel? I have heard that the strips of steel were wound around a mandrel and forged welded on the mandrel. Having experience with welding Damascus, I see some issues with this process working properly. In looking at pattern welded Damascus barrels, I can see the patterning of the Damascus strips and I know how to make Damascus in that pattern. I’m just not sure how they welded the Damascus strips into a barrel. I’m sure that I could figure something out myself, but I would like to see how it was done by someone else and I am surprised that there isn’t more information on the process out there.
The reason that I am interested in this is because I want to make a knife with a flintlock gun attached to it. There were some of these knife/gun combination pieces made throughout history. The gun will be made entirely out of Damascus, with different patterns used for the lock work and the barrel. The knife blade will also be Damascus.
