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No more Pete-my pea brain is fixin' to explode!

Post deleted by revdocdrew

Drew,
Thanks for the chronological table.
Remember the saying 'What goes round, comes round'?
Well I note that history shows the important role played in iron and steel production by India.
Here are a couple of maybe historic anecdotes.
As a young apprentice engineer in Birmingham I was brought up with such Industrial Giants in and around Birmingham as Guest Keen Nettlefold (GKN)possibly the largest manufacturer of threaded fasteners in the World and Round Oak Steelworks the company famous (infamous?) for producing the barrel for Saddam's Supergun.
Sadly both companies are now gone, Round Oak is now a shopping mall and all of GKN's threaded component manufacturing machines were bought by an Indian and shipped to India to produce fasteners there.
Result is we now buy fasteners from India that shred their threads like helicoils, nuts supplied blank without threads cut, spring washers without spring, etc., because they are cheap.
To me it all harks back to when W.W.Greener complained about Belgian Damascus and forced the Birmingham Proof house to conduct its trials documented in Richard Akehurst's book.
Bring on the Revolution (Industrial of course).

As expected, my first effort was highly inadequate. Thanks to Pete M we now present 'Pete and Drew's Damascus Dateline'

Resources:

Jean Puraye, 'Making Damascus Barrels', American Rifleman, April, 1976 This is the shortened English translation of the original 1966 article published by the Musee d'Armes de Liege.

Manfred Sachse, Damaszener Stahl: Mythos, Geschichte, Technik, Anwendung 1989

Robert Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World: In the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait 1995

Anthony North, An Introduction to Islamic Arms (Victoria & Albert Museum) 1985

Reprints are available: “Report On The Arms Industry of Liege-Diplomatic and Consular Report: May 1906”

Henry Blochmann, Henry Sullivan Jarrett, The Ain I Akbari by Abul Fazl ‘Allami, 1873
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&...e6TP-LncD-Vntzs

William Wellington Greener The Gun and Its Development 9th edition 1910
'Gun-making In Bygone Days'
http://books.google.com/books?id=3HMCAAAAYAAJ&dq=w+greener+barrel+patents
http://books.google.com/books?id=3HMCAAA...+1910&psp=1

Henry Wilkinson, M.R.A.S. Engines Of War: or, Historical and Experimental Observations on Ancient And Modern Warlike Machines And Implements, Including the Manufacture of Guns, Gunpowder, and Swords with remarks on Bronze, Iron, Steel, &c. London 1841
p. 70 Part III ‘On The Manufacture of Fire-Arms, And Modern Improvements.’
http://books.google.com/books?id=0XJeF_o...w3u60I#PPA70,M1

Manufacture Francaise d’Armes, Tarif No. 21, 1890, p. 8-9 http://www.bm-st-etienne.fr:80/specifiqu...EVUE_FOREZIENNE

Wootz Steel as the Acme of Mankind’s Metallurgical Heritage
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:eW_...;cd=5&gl=us

Glossary of terms:
http://www.davistownmuseum.org/PDFs/GlossaryOfFerrousMetallurgyTerms.pdf

Damascus blade history:
http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/f_hist/perret.htm


c. 1100 B.C. – Iron was first forged in India
384 B.C. - Aristotle describes the fabrication of sword blades in the Near East and India.
c. 300 B.C. – Crucible steel/Wootz was forged in Southern India.
c. 200 B.C. – Cast iron was forged in China
c. 500 A.D. – Near Nydam, Denmark, a ship sinks with a cargo of pattern welded sword blades. The Vikings (793-1066) used similar blades.
711 A.D. - The Moors (Muslim N. African Berbers and Arabs) gained control over most of Spain until 1212, and were not defeated in Grenada until 1492. Pattern welded sword blades were being produced in Toledo by 1000.
850 A.D. – Abu Yusuf ben Ishaq al-Kindi describes Damascus swords.
c. 1000 – Pattern welded sword blades were also produced in Indonesia (Kris) and c. 1100 in Japan (Tachi).
1077 - Muslim armies capture Jerusalem, leading to the first Crusade in 1096 with the eighth and last in 1270.

Period in which pattern welded sword methodology (folding and hammer forging) was applied to gun barrel methodology (twisting rods composed of thin of layers of iron and steel, wrapping the rods around a mandrel, and hammer welding the edges.)

c. 1200 - Iron musket barrels were first made.
1526 - Ottoman occupation of Hungary until 1686.
1526 Mastro Bartolomeo Beretta (1490 – 1565/68) of Gardone delivers 185 arquebus barrels to the Arsenal of Venice.
1550 – Brescia locks are used throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East.
1557 – Ferlacher Genossenschaft founded.
c. late 1500s – Pattern welded gun barrels were manufactured in India by Ain I Akbari and in Turkey.
1634 – Hungarian gunmaker Caspar Hartmann made Damascus barrels for King Gyorgy Rakoczi I.
c. 1650 - Spain produced pattern welded barrels during the reign of Philip IV 1621-1665.
1683 - The defeat of Kara Mustafa Pasha by Jan III Sobieski at Vienna. Claude Gaier, in Four Centuries of Liege Gunmaking states this was the key date in the development of European damascus as suddenly thousands of pattern welded gun barrels were available for examination.
c. 1700 – Liege is producing Twist barrels.
1718 – Espingarda Perfeyta describes Twist barrel production in Portugal.
1771 - Jean Jacques Perret published L'Art du Coutelier and describes the process of ‘twisting ribbons.’
c. 1790 – Jean-Francois Clouet (1751-1801), director of the Daigny Steel Works, expands Damascus production in Liege and Franchimont. Damascus SxS flintlocks appear in St. Etienne.
1798 - William Dupein obtains a British patent for a twist gun barrel of iron and steel.
1798-1799 - Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition against the Mameluks in Egypt and Ottomans in Syria and modern Israel. Upon his return, Napoleon expanded the production of Damascus barrels in St. Etienne and Liege into the First French Empire period 1804-1814.
1804 – Nicolas Bernard is producing Damascus in Versailles. His son Leopold (1832-1867) and Rene Leclerc were barrel makers in Paris in the early 1800s.
1806 - J. Jones is granted a British patent for a method of making barrels from scelps or strips coiled round a. mandrel so that the edges overlapped, and then welded together the edges of the strip.
1808 – The Vesdre Valley of Liege had 22 gunbarrel factories using hydraulic power for their trip-hammers. Helical welding replaced the previous barrel making technique of folding an iron band over a mandrel then longitudinally welding the edges.
c. 1820 – “Damascus iron” is manufactured in Birmingham by Wiswould and Adams.
c. 1830 - Maj. Gen. Pavel Anosoff is producing Damascus in Russia, and reproduced Wootz/Bulat in 1841. Cavaliere de Beroaldo Bianchini reports Damascus production in Vienna. Juan Sanchez De Miruenna is making Damascus in Spain.
c. 1895 - Union des Fabricants de Canons de Fusils de la Vallee de la Vesdre Les-Liege established.
1906 - Liege produced 850 tons of Damascus barrels (100 tons for export), 156,000 SxS shotguns, and 1.5 million guns were proofed at the Banc d’Epreuves de Liege.
1907 – Syndicat des Fabricants de canons de fusils de la Vesdre founded in Nessonvaux.
May 10, 1913 - Germany invades Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. Damascus production in Liege soon ceases.
1924-1930 – J. Delcour-Dupont attempts to revive Damascus production in Nessonvaux.

Drew,

Well done!

A note to most readers. Some of the dates are approximations. Some are based on single sources. As more research is done, we will cross check sources whenever possible. We should be able to firm-up the dating.

The "Golden Age" circa 1830-1910 is was not included. It will require a little more effort. There are many "sources" for this period. Some of which do agree as to dating. The firmest dates will no doubt come from patent information. We are still looking for Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, etc patents from the Golden Age. The English, French, Belgian and American fronts are pretty well covered.

Also the Ottoman period of influence is still being researched. More than any other sphere of influence, the Ottoman's were response for the diffusion of gunmaking technology. They had established armouries throughout the Persian gulf. In some sweeping moves, they established gunmaking centers in the mediterranean which traded with western Europe. Additionally, they employed many Europeans in Istanbul for the purpose of making weapons.

If you have or know of sources to add to this work, please contribute. We are all learning.

Pete

"We are all learning."
Amen brother-we're learning how little we really know (and that it would help to speak Arabic, French, and Russian )

You can add siyaqat. It is a special written form used only in the Ottoman Chancery. Supposedly, hundreds of years of records are sitting in Istanbul, waiting to be translated.

Pete

Just found a digitized The Ain I Akbari by Abul Fazl ‘Allami
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&...e6TP-LncD-Vntzs

And another good one
Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History By Arnold Pace 1990
1990 p. 73 ‘Gunpowder empires, 1450-1650’
http://books.google.com/books?id=X7e8rHL...hZJqJw#PPA73,M1

From Puraye's booklet, "Le Damas", 1966.
Cross section of a damascus tube that has "Prince Albert" spelled out on it. Puraye had this done to show that there is no surface etching but rather the actual iron and steel form the name.


Jean-Baptiste Declour and his son Oscar. The last of the commerical damascus producers at Liege, according to Puraye. Notice the huge grind stones in the background for grinding barrels and the stack of barrels to the left. The photo is undated.


Pete

I may have posted this before, but I don't think so.

This is a list of damascus types available from Beretta from their 1910 catalog. Some names I have never seen before. No pictures or drawings available unfortunately. They also use some strange adjectives to describe damascus, such as "rilevato".

Bernard
Boston
Brescia
Catanella
Crolle
English
Japanese
London
Oxford
Perl
Robinson
Star
Thonon
Turc
Washington

Pete