All are beautiful, but that Elsie comes the closest to what I was describing. Incredibly even patterns with very distinctive "stars" seem to distinguish the more expensively optioned guns I've seen (along with the great wood, stunning engraving, fine handling characteristics, etc., you know- "best"). From reading Greener's book, I understand that "overworking" as he referred to it can lead to less tensile and/or "burst" strength, but with few exceptions, the top of the lines guns I've seen and handled from the damascus era seem to have these features.
FWIW: I've owned and shot laminated steel guns (in 20-bore, 70mm nitro proof) that were supposedly as strong or stronger than Best English 3-bar (the 1894 Field Trial comparisons seemed to at least indicate that) but the tubes looked like plain skelp to me. Nowhere near as pretty.
Last edited by Lloyd3; 01/15/13 07:14 PM.
