And I at least have learned something from this exercise.
I'd also like to understand why "the near certainty that 304 stainless was not used" is nearly certain?
Geez Drew, you don't have to act so butt-hurt about the comments Miller and I posted here in your latest copy-and-paste "research".
Miller explained the very good reasons he felt that 304 stainless would not have been used for producing gun barrels... from the standpoint of a guy who spent a lifetime as a Machinist, cutting, drilling, threading, tapping, and milling various grades of steel and other metals. If you have something from your own work as either a Machinist or Metallurgist to counter that, please let us know.
You sure seem very sensitive and thin-skinned when anyone comments on any errors you make... and you do make a lot. For instance, you stated above that Parker Titanic Steel would not be an "alloy steel". But strictly speaking, every steel is an alloy.
My own research into steels isn't meant to either discredit you, or to prop myself up as some self-styled Double Gun Barrel Expert. I worked in a large integrated steel mill for a time after college. I thought I was unfortunate that due to my lack of seniority, I frequently got "bumped" to every department in the mill, and sometimes even got "bumped" from my electrician apprentice job, and had to work various production jobs. But looking back, I was lucky. Unlike most people who work in steel mills, I got to see every part of the operation from loading iron ore, coke, and limestone into Blast Furnaces, to converting iron to steel by various processes, to blooming, to hot and cold rolling, to pickling, annealing, finishing and shipping. Analysis was done at every step, and met lab analysis followed the product from melting right to the customer. I vividly remember poking a long fire retardant cardboard tube down into molten steel in a 260 ton electric furnace to get a sample to send to the met lab for analysis. I thought my face was going to melt as the Melter yelled at me to get the tube down deeper into the molten steel. The sample was sent over 1/3 of a mile to the met lab, in a tube that was a much longer version of what is used to send your deposit at a drive-through bank. Analysis was done, and the met lab called the Melter to instruct him to add more nickel, etc. and to blow oxygen for a given time to burn off excess carbon. So then I was privileged to poke a long oxygen lance into the molten bath as oxygen was blown in. This was not the most fun thing I have ever done, and it never gets to be mundane or routine. The noise, fire, sparks, and smoke are like being in the middle of a fireworks display. You wear "Woolies"... thick wool pants and coat while you do this work. The idea is that wool smolders when molten steel is splashed onto it, rather than burning straight through. While I was there, we had five guys killed in one year. Steel mills are hot, dirty, and dangerous... except in the winter when you can add brutally cold to the mix. The first time I got a "welders flash" wasn't from welding. It was from intently watching iron being tapped fresh from two large blast furnaces all day long. I quickly learned why the Melters and Furnace Operators all wore those little blue UV filter glasses over their safety glasses. I spent three cold winter months working in the Blast Furnace dept. It was common to have your sweaty clothing turn stiff when it froze between heats. There are no walls on the cast house. Several times that winter, I had someone come over and slap me on the back because I was on fire and didn't know it. No pictures of a Blast Furnace can do it justice. One night, I was told to go to the pouring platform at the Electric Furnace and stand behind a large I-beam column in case I was needed. They were pouring cap heats, a process to de-gas the molten steel, and I was told that sometimes they blew up, and if someone got f**ked up, I was to take their place. My early steel experience was up close and personal, not copy-and-paste.
Then, a couple years ago, I decided to revisit some old deer hunting spots because the places I was hunting were becoming unproductive. I remembered that I had killed my first buck with a flintlock off the top of an old stone furnace I literally stumbled into in the early morning darkness. I managed to climb on top of the 30 foot high ruins, and shot my buck later that morning. When I told a friend who hunted there in the past, he informed me that the furnace was an old brick oven, according to locals. Here's a pic of Webster Furnace where I shot my first buck with a flintlock.
As I looked at this area again to see if I could determine whether it was still open to hunting, I learned that the furnace was actually an old cut stone cold blast furnace that was built in 1837-38. The water wheel that drove the bellows, and the wooden casting shed, and all other buildings and structures were long gone. These furnaces typically ran until all the wood for miles around was cut down and consumed after being converted to charcoal. Trying to learn the history of this furnace led me down a long rathole of the history of early iron making in my state, and the U.S. Then I looked back earlier to Europe, India, and other places where iron ore was smelted. I also learned that much of the early terminology has carried over to the present day, and that the basic chemistry is much the same as when steel was first produced in very small quantities and was more valuable than gold.
This took me down the path of learning much more about cold blast furnaces, early hot blast furnaces, and many of the various processes and furnaces for conversion of iron to steel, including the Bessemer Process. Cursory study will show that trying to lump all Bessemer and Bessemer Process steels into one neat little box is just silly. The range of characteristics and quality is huge. A couple samples sent to a met lab will not tell the story. Ten thousand samples might be a good place to start.
I'm not going to copy-and-paste all of that here though, to try to prop myself up as some expert. As much as I've learned and seen and experienced, I am nowhere near an expert, and neither are you... not even close. And I could tell you that if you can't take a little criticism, you wouldn't last two days in a mill where they make steel.
