doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com More Damascus Pics

Tim,

There is a good chance the original owner never knew. It was common to have the barrels completely browned or black with no pattern visible direct from the maker.

There are examples where the pattern changes on the same barrel.

Pete

Pete,

I have seen where patterns have changed. But to tell you the truth I had never considered that they would brown or black the pattern away. How common was this?? I remember with the Parker guns, early on, when they changed to fluid steel, a big fuss was made about all the new "black barreled" guns. Or was that a English/Euro thing?

Tim

Maybe it was a salesman's gun and it was done to show two possible patterns.

Craig your finish is first class, I think it makes the gun more special having two different patterns, I have just had an army and navy in that has been blacked but has beautiful damascus barrels I informed the customer thinking he would be pleased but he still wants them blacked!!! I was so upset by this I even tried to buy the gun, and to make matters worse it was one of a pair and I had located the other one!

Barrel Browner, what % of your damascus barrels that come thru would you say have been browned so no pattern is showing or blacked?

Tim

Hi Timothy, I would say 1 in every 100 barrels is a set of damascus that has been blacked, when damascus fell out of favour the new steel barrels were the in thing so rather than buy a new gun a lot of people had their damascus blacked, I have had a few barrel come in that are brown but with little pattern and others that have a good colour, the skill is getting a combination of getting the pattern up properly and the colour right,it looks to me like Craig has got it spot on, I am interested now in learning how to adjust the colours, my grandfather could brown barrels with a blue shimmer to them, he could get a nice plum colour,it would be interesting to see how many different types of finish there is.

there is nothing more enjoyable than getting a pair of worn barrels in cleaning them off and then watching the pattern come up.
Paul

Excellent job Craig!

I've seen several barrels that Craig has browned, and he does a heck of a job. He also shoots that Lancaster as well as the browning job too.

Me thinks someone is about to embark on a second career!

Craig have you had a go at black and white yet?if yes what were your results like?

regards

Paul

Tim,

You have to ask the question, "How long does it take to produce the wonderful effect that CFW acheived?" I have had this conversation at length with Dale Edmonds and Keith Kearcher. No one has found a way to reduce the working time to even 1 day per set of barrels.

We know that at their zenith the Belgians were producing 156,000 barrels a year. So if only 50% of that is damascus, how common do you think simple black or brown finish was?

There are other finishes that no one is really doing today. A deep etch with hydrochloric as is common on many Germanic guns for instance.

I believe the range was much greater than we have today. We want to show off damascus barrels. Some one who would completely blacken damascus today is looked at a bit cockeyed. "They are trying to pass it off as fluid you know."

Pete

This IS exciting! The right barrel is the usual (nice) Damas Anglais or generic English "Three Rod", but the left MAY be "English machine forged chequered 3 rod Damascus" mentioned in the 1891 Birmingham Proof House Trial
http://books.google.com/books?id=inQCAAA...CmRPs&hl=en
Craig - could you please post an ultra close up of the left barrel pattern?
Dig, Peter, Mike, and Paul (didn't these guys have a "British Invasion" band in the 60's ? ) When you gentlemen find the English Damascus Rosetta Stone we'll know for sure!!