DaveM...whats that patent date on the barrel flats of your Parker? It looks like Apr ?? 1876...can you tell me that exact date please?
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sorry, I don't understand the info about mostly steel and a little iron....maybe someone can explain...
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I thought steel was an iron alloy, made tough by forcing carbon into iron ...aren't the black lines in damascus and twist actually the carbon (martinsite) that was folded into the steel? (carbon from bone and coal)...
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Please don't get overly technical with the answer...if you could, explain it in a way that could be understood by the thousands of uneducated men who actually made all the damascus/twist barrels. The men who made these damascus barrels knew full well that the objective was to fold and drive carbon into the iron for a stronger, tougher material that could withstand the forces and pressures involved with the end product. stahl- stand fast
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Rocketman...the thing that gave wootz damascus its charachteristic properties was primarily the naturally occuring impurities at the location of the site where the iron ore was collected. The ironmongers smelting and carbon folding techniques may be reproducable in other parts of the world, but without the original ore source, you can't clone wootz. The thing I find interesting was the forging techniques used by the smiths who used wootz billets. Those techniques can be used on any damascus, especially scrap double shotgun barrels...and guys are...3 or 4 years back, a guy offered me (4 sale at a gun show) a ladder damascus bowie...the guy is an advanced Cattaraugus knife collector, and he named it as "ladder damascus"...I'm not interested in ladder damascus, unless it's real wootz. Far flung as it may sound, I have Albert Paley's hand crank forge from when he was a young man. I live only about 75 miles away from his studio in Rochester NY, also the home of Jerry Swinney. About 15 years ago I used it to forge two damascus swords for and with my two nephews, had I known about the wootz techniques back then, perhaps I would have used them. That was the last of my damascus/twist experiments