George;
Please note that on US guns you will not find a mark as to what powder they were designed for, most of them won't even have gauge nor chamber length marked.
At age 80 & having recently gone through Chemo for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma I no longer get out & hunt like I used to. In the past I did a good bit of hunting with a Birmingham proofed J P Clabtough & Bros 12 gauge sidelock. This gun had 28" barrels & weighed 6 lb 14 oz. It carried only Black Powder proof & was built in the late 1890's, I loaded for it with smokeless using 1 oz loads at around 1150 fps @ about 8K psi. "If" I were still physically able I would still use it today. I do not recall the actual measurements but it had good wall thickness in the critical chamber & cone area & was in good condition, not pitted, & locked up tight & on face.
As to the reports on burst barrels, this is my personal opinion only. I think that when a barrel did burst after the fact the shooter began wondering why. If they soon found it was an act of stupidity or carelessness on Their part it was hushed up. Mattered not if it was steel or Damascus. If on the other hand it did prove to be a flawed barrel the the world heard about it. Fact is in the early days, at least up to WWI & perhaps even a bit longer steel making was near as refined as it is today. I firmly believe there were more of the early steel barrels which burst from internal flaws than Damascus ones. By this point in time Damascus barrel making was quite refined & even most of the lower grade ones have survived quite well.
Over the years I have known of a good many of the so-called JABC (Just Another Belgian Clunker) guns which were fired with even the "High Brass" loads on a regular basis. Many were Loose as a Goose, but the barrels were still intact & seemed to be no worse for the wear. That JABC was coined by a former member who is now deceased & no longer with us, missed greatly by us old timers. His nake was Ruiss Rupple & he was often known as the "Klunkermeister", hope I spelled that right.
I spent most of my working days in the Machinist trade with a good portion of it as a Model-Maker, so I worked closely with a good number of Engineers, some of which I though extremely highly of, some not quite so much.
