I suspect that the outside bands of metal were often iron to make the welds easier. Or once again I am wrong. It would seem that iron would be easier to use where the welds are and the steel is present to make the combo much stronger. Otherwise why not just make all steel damascus barrels?
Today there are makers using steel and steel to create damascus barrels.
There was no coding used on the barrels that referenced the number of rods, ropes, billets, riband, etc. At least none that I have found evidence of in primary sources.
Many already know this, from all the previous discussion.
During the golden age of damascus one of the goals was to achieve a lighter barrel and maintain strength. The early steels required very thick barrel walls to handle the hoop stress. The combination of iron and steel along with the geometry of the twisting made for a lighter shotgun barrel. Even the 1890 English test shows the damascus to be stronger than the fluid steel of the day.
Here are three rods. The composition will yield a Bernard pattern as we can see in the next photo which shows the pattern in the process of forming. It still requires more forging (hammering) and grinding.
Having steel or iron as the outer layer was not as important as was the pattern. The thicknesses of the layers were so thin in the billets as to make no difference.
The rods as they came from the rolling mills were only 4mm x 4mm square and about 3 feet long. They were heated red hot at the mill. A cold rolling would have caused the rods to crack later. At the forge, they were again heated red hot.
I had a long conversation with a blacksmith last week who watched the dvd. He described for me some steps that a non-blacksmith would miss ( I know I missed them ) . One of them was the barrel makers adding more billet to a barrel in progress.
Finally from Oscar:
Both of those samples came from the same barrel so they both have exactly the same pattern. Your observation just goes to show the difficulty of counting the "irons" in the pattern. Each rope or iron produces the left side of one whorl and the right side of another. You can easily see the boundary of a rope on these samples, but you cannot see and identify with certainty the boundary of the riband and count the number of ropes (irons) in the riband which is by definition the number of "irons" in the pattern.
Oscar
I do hope every knows that Dave saved 2 great discussions with Oscar about damascus:
http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbt...;gonew=1#UNREADhttp://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=6343&page=1#Post6343Pete
