Originally Posted By: L. Brown
The term used for the images shown in the 1922 V-C catalog is "micrographies", which I translated as Xrays. Not sure the same word exists in English. It's what you see through a microscope. But in any case, a very close look at the composition of the steel used in V-C barrels. And I think we can take it to the bank, given the direct references to Holtzer steel, that that was indeed the source V-C was using as of 1922--whether they made the barrels themselves or whether Holtzer made them.

There is absolutey no question that V-C makes barrels now, and has for quite some time in the post-WWII era. I'd agree with Raimey that it's not entirely clear when they started doing that.


I've done "micrographies" a million years ago. One needs to polish a steel sample post heat treatment with increasingly fine grit until diamond dust is used. Then the sample is looked at under a microscope. Absolutely no X ray is used or needed. The pictures certainly match what I remember of that process.

My gut feeling is that V-C was making at least some of their barrels, from rough tubes. The "exposition universelle" report certainly infers this, as it describes the type of preferred rough forging.
Of course I have no hard proof.
Such a hard proof will be quasi impossible to get 100 years after the facts and one or two major conflicts. One will have to rely mostly on hear-say and its lack of definitiveness...

Best regards,
WC-