Well, I own a bore gauge, and quite a few well-made damascus tubes, but I have never run into concentricity problems on the magnitude of 0.010" (ten one-thousandths). Have you checked yours to be sure it is out-of-round that much? I'm sure H&H would have required tighter tolerances than that. American makers such as Parker bought their raw damascus tubes from England and Belgium's best makers, just as I'm sure the London makers did. They were then bored to final internal bore and choke dimensions with the same machines used to bore the fluid steel tubes of the era, thus erasing any out-of-round bore problems that may have occured in the wrapping of the ribands around the mandrel.
Oops, I think I see we're talking about two different things. The comment with the bore gauge threw me off. If you are talking concentricity of the inside dia. with the outside, we won't find it with a bore gauge alone. We'll need a wall-thickness gauge to see it. However, concentric or not, as long as the bore is truly round and it is pre-bored for the liner in a truly round manner, I'm still not seeing the difference. If the internal bore was not truly round (as I originally thought you meant) then I could see a little difference, but I don't believe that is the situation that exists, right?
I'll stay out of the fluid-steel-is-more-concentric topic other than to say that I have measured quality fluid steel barrels with wall thicknesses that varied as much as any damascus barrels, especially close to the rib vs. the outside wall.
Last edited by vh20; 04/04/07 06:27 PM.
