A very interesting series of posts. As an ASNT certified Level II inspector in Mag Particle Testing (MT) among others, I agree with everything Dick_dup1 stated. Someone suggested a wet flourescent test, but I can ascertain that would be a near impossibility to come to any conclusions. I asked my Level III what procedure would he write and what code would he use to perform such test on damascus barrels. He came back with the answer that first he would have to find from a customer or appropriate source what would be the acceptable and reject criteria. This is because a damascus barrel by nature of construction will display continuous bands of discontinuities. He knew of no source of reject criteria for relevant indications. In fact, it would be very difficult to determine between relevant and non-relevant indications, depending upon the type/quality of damascus or twist construction.

For fun, I took the damascus barrels of one of my wall hangar guild guns (a JABC) and did a head shot followed by a coil shot. Under the black light I had a beautiful yellow/green graphic of the welds. A discontinuity that was relevant would have been very hard to find, much less interpret.

As an afterword, cleaning the barrels after the test required intensive work. Nonetheless, I found lines of rust beginning where the microfine particles had imbedded themselves. I would not want to put damascus barrels from a high quality gun in such a test. Jim Haynes

Last edited by Jim Haynes; 11/06/06 04:34 PM.

Jim Haynes