The blown barrel does not explain the mangled hull...
As to asking for a guarantee from a modern manufacturer to produce a gun with Damascus barrels . . .The problem is not the inherent weakness of Damascus, but rather the expense of making Damascus barrels in comparison to fluid steel.
Anyone with access to my book,
Parker Guns: Shooting Flying can see a dead-ringer picture of a blown Remington twist gun (albeit right chamber with red mangled plastic shell protruding). The chamber failed about one inch forward of the breech as a result of an estimated 30,000 psi overcharge. In this instance the known overcharge explains the mangled hull, and I see no reason, nor have I read any plausible explanation of the blown Baker that would lead a person to a better conclusion than, quite simply, a similar overcharge.
Damascus-type barrels went the way of the passenger pigeon because they, too, became obsolete with modern technology. An important part of the barrel forging process was the pounding of the plastic-state metal to drive out impurities; the more pounding, the more labor involved; the fewer inclusions, the better the barrel tubes; the more expensive the process, the more costly the better sort of raw tubes.
Sir Joseph Whitworth observed the labor-intensive forging process and devised a hydraulic "compressed steel" method of removing the debris from the molten steel by squeezing the crucible as the metal solidified from the outside toward the center. Given the physics of metal going from liquid to solid, the impurities migrated toward the liquid state in the middle, but instead of forming a core of impurities at the center (last part to solidify), the extreme hydraulic pressure forced the impurities up and out, like squeezing the goo out of a Twinkie.
Thus the patented "Whitworth Compressed Fluid Steel" became the state-of-the-art metal source for shotgun barrels in the 1880s in Great Britain and eventually in America in about 1894, when Parker Brothers attached a set of Whitworth tubes to an AH grade, thus creating the AAH Pigeon Gun priced at $400 ($100 over Finest Damascus AH grade). The original Whitworth process was expensive and the barrel tubes were in short supply at first (some say "rationed" to the best English makers).
The one thing compressed fluid steel barrels had that the Damascus-type (Damascus, Laminated, Twist) didn't have was consistency. The destructive proof tests of 1891 showed English Laminated first and Whitworth second, but the Whitworth tubes were all the same, while the Laminated tubes had a quantum variation, albeit all tubes passed the non-destructive part of the test with flying colors.
English Laminated barrels had always been highly regarded...Greener said that they "shot best," while Damascus "looked best." In other words, the favoring of Damascus over Laminated (or Twist) had to do with fashion and looks, not function.But the fluid steel barrels won out for reducing the skilled-labor component of cost when the process was refined and perfected. And there was a residual, time-sensitive element of quality...
The forging process endemic to Damascus-type barrels could never cleanse the metal like the compressed fluid steel process. Thus there were always inclusions--or "grays"--that were like time bombs waiting to do their destructive work. The better more expensive barrels minimized the problem by having had more labor expended in forging out the impurities, but they still had some; the cheaper barrels had less labor and likely more grays. Black powder and the fulminate and chlorate percussion caps and primers were extremely corrosive. Over time the grays corroded and weakened the barrels, maybe not so much in a well-cared for gun, but it happened. Every man-made object from its inception is on its way to the junk yard, some faster than others: It's called "depreciation" by the accountants and the Tax Code.
So it only follows that fluid steel displaced Damascus and Laminated and Twist as the automobile replaced the horse. The Whitworth process was so expensive in 1894-95-96-97 that Parker Pigeon Guns cost $400 ($100 over Finest Damascus in essentially the same quality grade). But industrial know-how duplicated the fluid steel process at a cheaper and and more democratic level and in 1898 Parker introduced Titanic Steel barrels on their $100 gun, and a year later the VH grade at $50 with Vulcan Steel barrels. Thus the forging of iron and steel barrel tubes as shown on PeteM's DVD became a lost art. Which still begs the question; Are Damascus-type barrels safe? And the answer is:
Slip a loaded shell in the chamber, sand-bag the gun, tie a long string to the trigger, step back around the corner of a sturdy building (all the standard precautions taken by Sherman Bell)...and yank the string. The thing I have noticed on this double-gun gig is the seemingly excessive interest of anglophile gun cranks in obscure proof marks on their foreign guns...yet where is the movement toward proofing all those old American wall-hangers? These homemade guns are the subject of endless speculations about suitability for purpose, and this thread is a glaring example of speculations to the 3rd power.
Methinks we will never know whether a spurious primer got in the powder, or the loader gave a double dose, or somehow there was a residual obstruction, or maybe a gray just finally compromised the strength of the chamber wall (in connection of extending the chamber for modern 2 3/4-inch star crimp shells?). What we do know, however, is that these things seem to happen to people who load their own shells and fire old wall-hangers that have not been proofed with anything approaching a modern proof load of, say, 18,500 psi.
I personally have no interest in shooting Damascus-type guns, but don't see this problem as strictly endemic to wall-hangers. Some of the fluid steel guns sold by Jim Julia with stated barrel thickness measurements have had caveats about safety. Maybe we all ought to send our guns to Tom Ambrust for some proof testing...or maybe more likely, we will just continue feeding our old doubles what we believe to be "light loads" and hope for the best. EDM
