I know who it is as well but I don't think that pic is from his gun. He found his by buying a Pieper with blued barrels and then discovering they were Damascus. What a prize to discover!
Wow!! If there is indeed a second gun with the exact same damascus pattern, that would be huge! At least to me.
As is probably already known, my document explains how words were placed into gun barrel damascus patterns. A section of my already written document, is a speculative commentary on the challenges of creating letters in a billet of gun barrel material. It begins with the observation that the material required to make a set of barrel tubes is rather small, meaning that the billet required would be of small dimensions. The small physical size of the billet would increase the difficulty of creating the lettering, given the challenge of stacking little pieces of iron and steel in the billet to form the letters. Creating the lettering on a larger scale would be easier.
The next observation in my commentary, comes from my extensive experience as a damascus smith. I would be apprehensive about making a billet which would only provide the minimum amount of material required for the project. Making damascus is a complicated and challenging process. No matter how experienced the blacksmith, failure is always on option. If I were given the task of creating such a singular masterpiece and if there were also a deadline for its completion; such as a presentation date, I would want to make enough material to make four or five barrel tubes.
This larger billet, would make it easier to create the lettering and also offer the opportunity to make several finished barrel tubes. I would choose the two tubes with the finest figure to build into the masterpiece gun. But that would leave the extra tubes, which would be a waste to throw away after so much work and cost. However, it would not be a good idea to allow them to be discovered as having the same pattern as the masterpiece, because that would minimize the significance of masterpiece as being singular. The option? Just blue the remaining barrels to hide their pattern and use them to build other guns.
I believe this second gun carries the barrels made by the smiths as insurance against failure. That would make it very unique and also revealing of the secrets of the barrel smiths. It would be very interesting to compare the serial numbers of the original Pieper pattern gun and this second gun, to see if they are sequential.
