Joe;
Buck did a nice job on your barrels. He has browned barrels for me in the past and I think that his work is excellent.
I do not know if anyone knows exactly how the color of the final finsh of browned damascus barrels looked as they were completed by gunmakers of England in 1870 (for instance). I have been told that they should be Hershey chocolate color. And if this is true then the barrels finished by Nick Chambers fos the "new old" Greener hammergun (as seen on page 87 of the Summer 2008 issue of "DOUBLE GUN JOURNAL" is likely correct for that period.
On a related note to barrel browning I submit an extract from and advertisement in December 1803 Charleston, South Carolina newspaer by my ancestor Thomas Hennon, gunsmith. "Thomas Hennon, late of Liverpool...at No. 38 Queen street near King Steet...guns and pistols stocked and repaired in the neatest manner and guns and pistols browned, equal to any in Europe."
In a latter advertisement, Thomas Hennon warns the public that his formula for barrel browned has been unlawfully taken by others and that he is the only ",,,regular bred gunsmith" knowing the secret and that he has ..."worked in all the polite" countries as a gunsmith.
Quite a play on words.
