doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Damascus explained

RC - couple of things. The horseshoe nail thing was very likely done, although I've heard several versions. There would have been no special properties imparted. But, they were a good source of salvage steel.

I'd bet on the gunsmiths' demise from "tuberculosis" was actually silicosis from grinding barrels. Brit barrel makers had the same problem.

Sorry, but I don't know any details on Bis. Lot of good stuff here. Keep it up!!

Dave's barrels are very interesting and I've been following the thread about them on the PGCA Forum and was waiting to add them to the PictureTrail after something definitive was decided http://www.parkergun.org/forums/forum1/3714.html
One of the articles I've found states that STEEL STAINS BLACK AND IRON WHITE/SILVER after the acid etching. Is this correct? so the brls have a LOWER steel/iron ratio than the usual damascus? Dale told Dave that he thought the brls didn't take color because of the high steel content? Apparently Parker briefly made their own damascus brls?

Mike: I would like to add your 'American Flag' brls to the PictureTrail. Please include the make, grade, and year of production. You can post the pic here or send by JPG attachment to revdoc2@cox.net and thanks!

Just called Dale Edmonds, who was quite helpful. He confirmed, and apparently Dr Gaddy discussed in the 97' Double Gun Journal articles, that iron turns black and steel turns white, probably because the oxidation is removed much easier from the steel. Issue settled

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

Carbon can't be mechanically driven into iron - it must "disolve" in a high heat environment. The chemical combination of iron and carbon forms an alloy we call steel (carbon content over about 0.05%). The folding and heating process exposes more area of the iron to carbon and, thus, increases the rate of absorbation. Case hardening uses the same chemical process, but doesn't expose as much of the steel to the carbon rich casing material. The hazard of mechanical introduction of carbon is that any carbon not absorbed (or contaminate material) will be included in the final metal as a very weak spot. The larger the inclusion, the more detrimental to the strength of the base metal. Removing all extranious material and arriving at a known and controled carbon content, along with avoiding cooling shrinkage voids is the holy grail of steel making. Old time craftsmen did some very amazing work considering the tools, ores, and knowledge they had to work with.

Wootz has been replicated and documented. It produces a nice blade steel, but nothing special compared to modern alloys. Of course, it would have seemed magical to anyone used to using an iron/low carbon blade. Its claim to fame was being workable at low enough forging temperatures to not burn out the naturally occuring carbon and, so, leave you with a fairly high (for the time) carbon alloy. I believe the trick is a very narrow level of mangnese (I could be wrong on that alloying component). Anyone else remember the reports on this?

Some interesting infro on Wootz steel, the first by a damascus expert at Iowa State:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeven-9809.html
Looks like it's vanadium and molybdenum that cause the damascene appearance of Wootz
http://met.iisc.ernet.in/~rangu/text.pdf
http://www.brisa.fi/wootz3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

I couldn't find anything about Wootz being used for gun barrels or 'pattern welded' (what we call damascus) steel.

Rocketman...I have driven and folded carbon into mild steel more than I should have, I could have been working for money during that time. The technique is like reloading in that you're stuck adhering to a few concepts that can't be deviated from or falure will occur. For the moment, forget the 30-50 inch continous blacksmith weld that is required for one tube, and try welding the basic lap joint. Without the coal dust and fresh (unburned) ground bone in between the two pieces, to outgas carbon while welding you will get a "cold weld"...Cold welds are where most failures occur. Probaly by not removing all the scale before welding. If you adhere to time tested techniques, like applying the bone to the surface to be welded directly from your sieve, there is little chance of a bone chunk causing an inclusion the way residual scale will. Even if you apply too much bone in one spot, it simply burns off. I spent several years during and after college on the edge of anvil

WOW!!! Great wootz links...is that true taht some wootz steel can exeed 20% [Brisa link]? I find that VERY hard to believe...Wiki says 2% not 20%...and I'm shocked to see hyperbole on that wikipedia page and links.
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One of the wiki links has an article about, what used to be called, the DSRT damascus steel reseach team...somewhere in the attic I have a picture of those guys from the 1980's...
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Oh yeah...the one thing not covered on those pages, so perhaps it's not correct, is how damascus steel got it's name. Under the heading "Origin of the Term" it offers only one plausable explanation and cites several others, but doesn't list the long accepted version that the first carbon steel billets or cakes came from merchants who traded out of Damascus Assyria. Worldwide people began to associate those "cakes" with Damascus [the city] despite their true origin on manufacture. Much the same that we call all reciprocating saws "Sawsall" or an adjustable wrech a "Cresent Wrench", no matter who made the saw or wrench... Water pump pliers we call Channelocks.
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Simply stated, the misnomer of damascus spread before the knowledge of true origin.

Drew,

I was disapointed to find that something in my gunroom corner where this gun has been stored till it gets its renovation has really turned the colors dark. Even with bright sunlight this was the best I could do.

The gun is an Ithaca Flues, Grade 1 1/2 with 28" barrels.