I blew up a 1889 Remington with twist barrels. Somehow, and don't ask me how, I had IMR PB on top of Pyrodex in the powder bottle. I even had "Pyrodex 94grs" written on the bottle. Anyways, shooting skeet on a windy day in the winter I said to a friend, " man, these sure do kick, gonna have to lower my charge". Because it was windy and was shooting Pyrodex [ doesn't smoke as much as BP ], I just assumed the load was a bit much. On station 2 on the doubles, the left barrel let go. Shell was sticking half way out the barrel in the chamber area. The barrel steel was gone along with a rip in my wind breaker between the elbow and wrist. A piece of skin about a 1/4" thick, 1" wide and 3" long was hanging down. I said, " this doesn't look good". Put a rag around it , had the wife drive me to emergency and 23 stiches latter was shooting again. The next week I finally figured out what I had done. Sent the shells to Tom Amhurst [sp] and he said they were at 22,000psi. Sent the barrels somewhere in Calif to be tested and all I heard was that they had a sharp step on the outside right at the end of the chambers and thought this contributed to the failure. So, will all Damascus barrels withstand 32,000psi - no. But then 22,000psi is more than any normal shotgun shell produces. I've still been shooting for 10 years or more since the accident twist, laminate, and pattern welded Damascus barrels SxS's with nitro powders. I've used Nito, Solo, PB, 700X, 800X, Red Dot, Select, and Promo, all without further problems. I feel any load with pressures below 8000psi are totally safe, or a occasional regular modern shell.
Last edited by Paul Harm; 11/22/14 04:26 PM.