Substituting modern steels certainly has its drawbacks. But I think with some testing and research, we can find suitable materials. There is a company in England that sells reclaimed wrought iron. So, the avenue exists to try to match what the old barrels were made of. There are also some modern steels for electrical products that are high silica content. I asked Aldo Bruno (New Jersey Steel Baron) to locate a source for these high silica steels. He hasn't got back to me on them.
I have myself considered 203E and 1018 for damascus barrel steels. I think they are worth a try. I have also thought that it would be great to have a mix of materials that could easily be colored by hot bluing. I've been told that 203E will take color in hot bluing. But I know that nickel will not. Perhaps a combination of nickel and 1018 would be a good choice. It certainly would work for a damascus overlay on a steel liner. There would be no need for etching and fussing with finishing to get the damascus pattern to display. Should be able to just drop it in into a bluing tank and come out with a nice black and white pattern. This mix would also be suitable for any other type of damascus finishing.
You may find it challenging to remove the tapered liner from the wound riband. I often had to use a hammer to start the tapered mandrel out of the riband coil during winding. This is with only a couple turns of riband. I think the turns of riband contract on the mandrel as they cool. Certainly the liner could be separated from the riband coil, with enough force. Just have to sort out how you will do it.
You probably need to consider how you will do some heat treating of the finished barrel tube. The forge welding temperatures will enlarge the grain structure of the steel. You will want to thermal cycle the tube to reduce the grain size and then maybe spheroidize anneal it for machining. I am pretty confident that the old barrel smiths also thermal cycled many of the tubes that they made. There are old writings that state that the best barrels were hammered at a black heat. The amount of cold hammering was sometimes related to the amount of beer supplied to the smiths. They believed that they were compacting the steel, same as the old teachings of packing the edges of knife blades. We know now, that the thermal cycling of the steel was all that was required to refine the grain structure. I believe that many of the old barrels that the barrel finishers have problems with, are a result of the tube not having been properly thermal cycled to reduce the steel's grain size.
This gets complicated pretty quickly, doesn't it?
