Using shotgun barrel Damascas

P

PeterB

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Apr 29, 2007
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158
I am a gun stockmaker and have a friend who cuts down old Damascas shotguns (legal length) for Cowboy Action Shooting. He gives me the 7"-13" barrels, and I was thinking about making some neat knife blades. It is obviously a totally different type of Damascas than usual Damascas knife blades, but might be very interesting. The barrels are soft soldered and each flattened barrel would be about 0.1"x1" wide. They are Damascas, twist steel, and laminated (complex twist). I was thinking about forging them with some good blade steel in between. Any thoughts, comments, suggestions?
 
I think it could look great. On a 12ga bbl that's slit down one side, you might get a piece that's quite a bit wider than an inch. Might want to try the weld on a press to keep the pattern as close to original as possible.

Just guessing, good luck with it, Craig
 
This was discussed some years ago. The general conclusion is that 1) the steel used for shotgun barrels will be of relatively little use when it comes to holding an edge and 2) the steel is generally thin enough that if it was forge welded in a san-mai type of setup around a good core, it will end up getting lost to the forging/cleanup process before the piece is finished.

Depending on what you have though, I may be interested in a trade for some new damascus. I'm always looking for pieces to study and barrel steel is one of the things on my list. I need some pieces to examine up close before I begin doing the same type of welding here in the shop.

-d
 
Yes, it isn't blade steel.

The term "damascus" means a different thing is gun barrels. But it might be made into a attractive hardware, like bolsters on bowies ,or koshirae on Japanese blades.
 
Several years ago I was given a damascus barrel from Germany and forged welded it to a piece of 52100 steel.It made a pretty neat bowie.I also kept a piece of the barrel for refrence.I`ll try and get a pic up for everyone to see. Robert
 
I think it might be cool to use some barrel damascus on a knife blade, in a San Mai fashion. A piece of gun barrel damascus on each side with a high carbon steel core.
 
Here is how the barrel Damascas was made. On twist steel, they were often horseshoe nails mixed with cast iron. They were welded and then wrapped around a barrel mandrel and edge welded. Laminated was more complex with many variations. However, a common method was to weld the same as above then twist it around itself before wrapping around a mandrel and edge welding. This gave the advantage of making a very small area of bad weld if there were an area of bad weld. That way, no blown barrels. The true barrel Damascas was even more involved. They started with 1/4"-3/8" wide strips of iron and steel and welded usually 3-5 of these into a flat, long bar. They then took 3-5 of these and alternately twisted them right and left handed. These were then edge welded and wrapped around a mandrel and edge welded again. This, again, made any poor weld a spot affair that would not effect barrel strength.

We have all heard of the danger of old Damascas barrels. This was a lie perpetrated on the sport writers of the day (no smarter then than now). The Damascas of the day was just as strong as "fluid" steel of the day. This did not change until 1930 with the advent of the Winchester Mod 21 and the Browning Superposed which were the first two shotguns of truely modern steel.

Two Parker #2 frame 12 Ga shotguns were tested with proof loads and strain gauges. One was pitted Damascas and the other "fluid" steel. They were tested at 2000 psi increments starting at 10,000 psi. Both blew their barrels at between 29,500-30,500 psi. As you would imagine, they were made to the same strength, originally.
 
if it were me... i'd makum into hawks.. like a pipe hawk

just forgeweld in a bit of tool steel for the cutting edge..

Greg
 
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