doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Steel

I've worked with steel all my adult life. I started out making home-made shotguns out of iron pipe when I was 15 and became a machinist in my twenties so I think I know something about steel. Or do I? I read here and on "the other forum" posters who say that early 20th. century steel is weaker that modern stuff. In my experience pre WW1 steel can be just as good as the best modern stuff but my experience doesn't include pressure test comparisons so I know that I don't really know. I have a BSA from 1919, a period when one might expect poor quality from British steel, that has superb metal. Hard, rust resistant, beautiful finish that has kept all it's sharp corners thru nearly 90 years. So if someone would please enlighten me I'd appreciate it. Are steel barrels of that period really not up to snuff? Or is it more a matter of honed to death?
nial

What a great question! I think it might even be a worthy subject for one of Sherman Bell's Finding Out for Myself articles. He already has a number of sacrificed barrels and actions which could be used in futher testing.

Whatever happened to...was it Zircon's?...call to 'contribute junk to science' in Dec. 05'?

The term "Titanic Steel" makes my teeth chatter.

jack

Well, the question about how good old steels are is probably a never ending one. That's why Zircon took on the project to acquire and test samples from as many sources as practical. There's lots of speculation as to what these earlier steels were composed and how strong it is.

We constructed a hoop tensile fixture at my friends place and Zircon had the task of machining coupons from the samples collected. I haven't heard from him in while. With luck, he's making some progress, although he's a busy guy and this is a sparetime endevor.

We can speculate and read and quote qualitative writings on the subject, but the botton line is we haven't seen conclusive test data on the subject. That's why Zircon found this subject so interesting.

"Steel" covers a lot of territory. For plain carbon (not enough other alloy elements to be a significant factor) steel, low carbon steel is pretty soft and high carbon steel can be quite hard with proper heat treatment. Adding in some of the "usual suspects" such as silicon, copper, lead, tungsten, chromium, nickle, sulfur, moly, etc. and you can change the properties a lot. However, carbon remains very important. Well case hardened low carbon steel makes perfectly satisfactory gun frames and levers. Properly hardened high carbon steel makes fine springs. Plain low carbon steel is just fine for barrels. So, plain carbon steel technology is good enough for guns, even though modern alloys are better.

Tests by the Birmingham proof house found the best of damascus barrels to be a little stronger than early fluid compressed steel (low carbon). Both were strong enough to be made into barrels with walls thin enough that denting was much more an issue than bursting.

Plain carbon steel technology was fairly well understood by the British and dramatic progress was made in quality in the late 1800's. The major advantage of modern steel is in both quality of cleanness and in specialized alloys.

There are no "lost secrets" of steel. The original Bowie knife was reputed to have had some meteriorite - likely some good alloy elements in there. True Damascus, not the laminite we use for gun barrels, was based on some stuff called Wutz and has been recreated. It is much better for cutting edges than plain low carbon steel, but nothing special when compared to modern blade technology. Had you been armed with a low carbon steel blade, and your opponent armed with Damascus, you might very well have considered his sword magical. However, most of the magic of ancient steel was based on one-time fortuitus alloying and was not generally repeatable on demand. Characteristics were all over the map.