doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Twist versus Laminated Steel barrels

Double post.

Not THAT Laminated Steel Lloyd, but it was good stuff
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cvqRzkg0wEjhAAcFWr8gFi7aPFRsSIJ_hahfDxmrNAU/edit

3 Iron British Best Laminated Steel



https://docs.google.com/document/d/1__gn3XKjLX_4V0LguzoVGBwJRFS6SxsWGzUwHq93neo/edit

A 2-fer Pre-1890 Well Fargo faked Smith F grade hammer gun
Laminated Steel R & Twist L

When I needed work done on my Parker Grade 1 hammer gun with Laminated Steel barrels nobody would touch it, not even Thrnbull. In desperation I asked Brad Bachelder if He thought he could do the repair. He said “Sure, no problem. Laminated is the strongest and most resilient of the composites.” So I gave the gun to him and he made the repair flawlessly. I shoot it often.

Preacher, are those pictures of your guns? Do you actually own any guns besides that O Grade L.C. Smith with Damascus barrels and a .016" thin spot 14" from the breech?

I think it is a valid and legitimate question... for us to know if you have actual experience with a variety of firearms, or just a huge collection of pictures of guns.

DAM16SXS: That seems odd, did anybody say why they wouldn't work on your laminated steel Parker? What sort of repair were you talking about? As you mentioned, it is also my understanding that laminated steel was the most resilient of all the composite barrel types, with perhaps the exception of Silver Steel Damascus (Greener's).

Dr. Drew: I finally got the "2-fer" you were talking about above (on the pre-1890 F grade Smith hammer). The upper tube is clearly twist, the bottom tube is the laminated steel.

An early form of Laminated Steel was often found on British "Best" in the mid-1800s but by the 1870s crolle damascus and by the 1880s that new fangled fluid steel stuff was more often being used.

The Birmingham Proof House Trial reported in 1891 (linked above) only had 3 laminated steel samples; #1, #9 & #24
"3 Iron British Best Laminated Steel" was indeed #1, but there was no practical difference between that, Whitworth, and the other "First Class" winners:
English Steel, Siemens – Martin process
English machine-forged variegated Damascus, 2 rods
English “Superior Barrel Steel”
Foreign Steel, Siemens – Martin process
English machine-forged best Damascus, 4 rods
English machine-forged chequered Damascus, 2 rods
Foreign Steel

Unfortunately, I had no Laminated Steel samples in my tensile test study, but have never seen documentation of greater yield strength with Laminated Steel.

If someone would like to send me a segment (be sure it's not Twist and I need the maker and rough DOM) I'd be happy to take it over to METL for tensile testing.

This is interesting. A Smith A-2 Variation 1 (courtesy of Terry Allen) with British Best Laminated Steel, which was never listed as an option

Very nice! On the A-2 Smith, is that finish "browned" from original or has it changed over time? I had thought that American guns were predominately black & white originally.

Met with my 'smith yesterday ands we went over my 1891 No. 1 gun together. He completely agreed with me, those tubes are quite stout(!), he also dismissed my concerns about some nascent cracks developing behind the left lock-plate. So...I took it to the closest range and ran a box of shells through it (I screwed up and forgot the nice, mild stuff I had picked out for my 1st time out with it and had to buy some fairly-warm Remington "Handicap" 1 1/8 ounce target loads at the range). It shoots clays with abandon & the recoil was very manageable (for me, that shorter LOP [@14 LOP] could benefit from a cinch-on pad for a little extra length, which I ordered online right after). The tubes did get screaming hot on those zippy Remington loads and I had no gloves or handguard. I don't remember my fluid steel guns heating up quite so quickly.

That Smith is a beauty. Stepped lockplates are beautiful when done that well, IMO. It is a carryover from the muzzleloading building era. I have observed the same treatment on original flintlocks.

Concerning laminated barrels ....... I have an Isaac Hollis with, what I have been told by two barrel refinishers, English Laminate barrels. When I acquired the gun the barrels had been rust blued, but you could tell that they were pattern welded. Both barrel refinishers struggled greatly to get any contrast with them. Both expressed that this type laminate is the hardest to get any contrast in that they had ever worked with, and both felt that it had to do with a higher percentage of steel, as compared to iron, than in most pattern welded tubes.

Stan: This old Smith gun will be headed to Arizona at the end of August to get the "Black & White" treatment (amongst a few other things). I assume that it will be polished first, before the many cycles of rusting and carding, and I'm really looking forward to those results (if you must shoot a big, long, & heavy American 12-gauge double, it should at-least be interesting to look at, right?) but...I'm remembering some of my past English guns with "Best Lamainated Steel" tubes and sadly, you may be right. Even British-browned, these high-steel content laminates don't have the striking patterns that the Crolle-type Damascus guns do. More's the pity!