I may be 'all wet', but I don't know if I agree with 2-piper's assessment of where the gun will blow up should that happen. With steel barrels (this may not be true of damascus???), barrels made of chopper lump construction will blow up at the area where barrel wall thickness is least (ie, just prior to choke). With monoblock, the weakest point is at the weld and therefore, they have a tendency to blow up there at the breech. Hence the added expense and safety of chopper lump over monoblock construction(however this may only be true with barrel obstruction??). Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesen't make sense to me that these damascus barrels would blow up at the breech or chamber of the gun if they were to blow up unless that area is where the weakest weld point is???
