doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Shooting Damascus

This is one of my favorite guns to shoot. 16 gauge Parker with 32" Twist barrels.

Here's what I do with my old dangerous twist barreled guns. This is a 10 bore hammer Parker with Belgium welded twist barrels. Texas Panhandle is the country.

This is one of my Favorites. It's a W.W. Greener 12 ga from about 1875,with the "Self Acting Striker", which means the Hammers as you can see pull the Firing Pins back when cocked.I believe these are "Stub Damascus"

Joe, so glad to see you protecting yourself from those big greenheads with your dangerous old Parker! I can tell you were really agonized about it

One word of caution on carrying your hammer gun open, be sure it has a good solid bbl check. Many hammer guns did not & stop when the forend iron contacts the frame bottom. Such guns should be opened gently, lest an undue strain be put upon the forend lug. For a hammer gun I prefer rebounding locks & carry it closed & unlocked. On non-rebounders I carry it at the safety cock. Unless the bls are Chopper-Lump (few hammer guns are) the lug is a seperate piece brazed in. I have seen far, far more bbls with a steel lug than twist or damascus. Many also will have steel ribs, but you also see bbls with the ribs made of similar metal to the bbls.

Here's one of my favorite shooters. It's a Williams & Powell of Liverpool made about 1870. Great on dove even if it does have dangerous damascus tubes. Question of the day: why is it no one raises an eyebrow when someone shoots a muzzleloading shotgun with welded barrels but the second they see a breechloader with it the cry becomes "DANGER!"?



And another one. This is a Blissett & Son, also of Liverpool. Made somewhere around 1875. Thirty inch tubes and weighs in at 6/2.

My friends and I put 100 more rounds through my Meriden today including the two rounds I fired for pattern. I wasn't concerned about pellet count, rather point of impact. I am visiting the Rio Grande Valley right now and we had a very windy day and thus not the best for shooting. I had intended to step back 40 yards...but found wind a factor and that my orange dot was hard to see, so I stepped up a bit and these patterns were actually fired at closer to 30-35 yards. The right barrel appears to have a more open choke than the left (a good thing in my book) which explains why I was shooting trap a bit better last weekend using the more open choke; and the shotgun appears to be hitting more or less where I point it (a very good thing).

After watching me have so much fun shooting a couple of boxes of shells through the old gun at hand thrown clays, two of my friends decided they were willing to take a chance on the Meriden and together we fired another 50 rounds.

I must comment on and thank everyone for all the great information everyone has provided in response to my questions. I hope others are finding this as valuable as have I. Most of all, thanks for posting photos of your prized damascus shooters. What a great collection of guns and owners!

I wish I could post some neat photographs of game taken with my damascus. A broken clay isn't very impressive (and very hard to photograph), but below are the patterns I shot today.

Doug

Doug, those look like pretty darned good patterns to me! What shells were you using?

Joe- I don't know how good the patterns are but I noticed when I got a clay up close, it pounded it hard, and I found that if I missed with the first shot, more often than not I managed to break the clay with the second shot and some of those second shots were at a pretty good distance.

So far I have shot 175 rounds through the shotgun and the only ammunition I have used is the Federal Vintage Gold Medal Ammunition 12 Gauge 2-3/4" 7/8 oz #7-1/2.

"This vintage ammunition was produced specifically for MidwayUSA to the following specifications:

7/8 oz shot, 1200 feet per second velocity, 5,000 pounds of chamber pressure."

Midway cautions it is not for use in damascus barrels, however.

So essentially, I am shooting an 8 1/4 pound 20 gauge, and loving every minute of it!

Doug

Doug, 7/8 loads are my "go to" loads for skeet with any of my 12 bores. In my opinion they're as good as any heavier loads for that game. And sooooo sweet to shoot. I've even used them for some SC games with good results, though I'm not shooting for score. My favorite upland hunting loads are based on 1 oz. loads in Federal Gold hulls with pressures around the 5,000 psi at around 1200 fps. Good luck!