doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Another Damascus Barrel Smith

I have been communicating with a smith in Finland, who has welded a damascus barrel tube. His name is Riku Hannukainen. Riku is a third year student at the Myn�m�ki Art and Craft Collage, in Finland. His barrel was his graduate work project. Riku hopes to get into a gunsmithing school, after his graduation from the arts and crafts college.


Below is a link to a photo album where Riku has loaded photos of his barrel work.

Riku Hannukainen Images

Very nice.

Great to see another taking up this "lost art".

Very, very cool to actually see the process from start to finish.

Thanks Steve. This is always fascinating and much appreciated. Could you tell us a bit about how you and the early Damascus barrelsmiths fluxed or what techniques were used to keep scale from becoming entrapped during the forge welding process? It looks like something that would be all but impossible considering the amount of area that is being welded.

Thank you, Steve!

You are all quite welcome for the information on Riku's barrel. I thought you may be interested in learning that there is another smith who is working on making damascus gun barrels. I've seen some photos of architectural and artistic blacksmithing work that Riku has done. He is a VERY talented blacksmith.



Keith, that is an excellent question. You must have some experience with blacksmithing, to be knowledgeable enough to ask.

Honestly, it is virtually impossible to avoid slag entrapment when welding a barrel. I have a few small slag inclusions in my barrel, I think I can see a couple in Riku's barrel and Greener states in "The Gun and its Development" that it was common in the old barrels. Greener called them "grays", because these areas of slag entrapment would not color during the finishing process of the barrel.

I've read that the billets/faggots/lopins were fluxed with borax and welded in a rolling mill. The rollers would effectively squeeze the flux from between the layers as the welding progressed. I have never seen mention of flux being used during the welding of the barrels.

I've been told that the curators at the Belgian gun museums say that barrels were welded without using flux. My first reaction to this, was that this was impossible. But after further research, I have to admit that I do not have enough information to say that it isn't plausible. I am fairly confident that the "iron" element used in old damascus barrels was wrought iron. Wrought iron contains silica and is capable of being self fluxing. I have welded wrought iron to wrought iron without flux. I have never attempted to weld wrought iron to steel, so cannot say that it isn't possible to do without flux.

I've tried a lot of different fluxes and combinations of fluxing agents in my work. I've done a lot of research on welding fluxes and intend to continue. For most of my knife blade damascus, I use kerosene as a flux. But, kerosene is a one weld at a time process. So, it is unsuitable for barrel welding. On my gun barrel, I used a 50/50 mixture of 20 Mule Team borax and charcoal dust.

Attached to the side of the anvil (enclume de cannonier) was a small device. In the film, the smith's regularly scape the heated material on it. I believe they are using it to scrape slag. There is no evidence in the film of fluxing. They never show it being applied, nor is there any container nearby to hold it.

I think Steve has nailed it regarding the silicone. This became an issue when coke was introduced for the smelting. The coke introduced a high silicone content. The Belgian barrel smiths complained of this as they felt it affected the look of the finished product. For a time, they went so far as to import wrought iron from Sweden.

Eventually they got Cockerill to produce runs for their needs.

Pete

Steve, I have done some forge work, and was taught forge welding both with and without using borax as a fluxing agent. I was told it was important to scrape off the flux or scale from the surfaces being welded just prior to joining to get the strongest joint. Of course, scale begins to re-form immediately so it would be next to impossible to make such a weld without at least a small amount of scale entrapment unless you could do it in an oxygen free atmosphere. Steel mills use both mechanical scale breakers and high pressure water sprays to blow scale off of slabs, blooms, or billets just prior to entering the rolling mill to minimize rolled in scale.

I've done a great deal of oxy-acetylene welding and learned early on to manipulate the flame and puddle to float slag, scale, etc. up and out of the weld joint, so I'm sure it's entirely possible to weld steel to steel or wrought iron to steel without use of flux. I was just curious how you minimize scale inclusions when welding Damascus. I'm also curious just how much this inclusion of scale affects the strength of the weld joint. It might be interesting to compare the force required to break weld joints of equal size and composition using a forge welded joint as compared to a flux or inert gas shielded welded joint. Pete's observation of barrelsmiths using a scraping device on the anvil makes sense, and hammering the red hot metal knocks a lot of the scale off the surfaces too. Obviously, these welds are sufficiently strong or a lot of us would have had our faces blown off. Knock on wood!

There is a 1934 movie showing the Belgian rolling mills in action. However, the museum steadfastly refuses to even discuss obtaining a copy... They also have a 1934 version of the barrel smiths at work. They are on continuous display at the Museum of Walloon life in Liege.

My own belief is that the poorly made barrels were sent to the scrape heap decades ago.

If Steve keeps it up, he will soon have students / followers on all continents.

Pete