Geo,

Chuck is spot on about not honing your barrels. Honing can make the walls dangerously thin. You can see the honing marks on this baker.



This is one take on minimum barrel wall thickness. You can see it varies as you move away from the breech. On the damascus barrels that I have measured, the breech is often not as thick as this illustration recommends. I have found a few where the breech was too thin for me. Recently purchased an beautiful bernard damascus gun that has a breech thickness of less than .10 at 3". It will never get shot by me.



Pete

http://www.damascus-barrels.com/Movie.html