doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Do barrels get brittle with age?

I was showing off my 1880's vintage hammer gun recently and I had someone comment that he would never shoot something that old because he would be afraid the steel would be too brittle. Even though my gun is in wonderful shape and that isn't something I worry about, I can understand his retiscence. At what point, if ever, would steel barrels become brittle enough to make shooting them unsafe, no matter their condition?

I doubt it's a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if the metal changes. However, I doubt they become dangerous.

The Brits send old, damascus bbled doubles through the proof house all the time. These guns pass all the time.

If there was a problem, the proofing process would reveal it and the resale of these guns would be banned in the UK.

I say load it with the appropriate loads and shoot away.

OWD

It's called "fatigueing", and it usually takes thousands of cycles.

the solder holding barrels to rib(s) will surely fail first.

Mark et al: Remington was the defendant in a major lawsuit over this issue maybe 15 years ago, and lost. Prosecution was able to convince a jury that their metallurgy was deficient in, I think, their 870 barrels from the 60s and 70s. Their allegation involved the embrittlement issue. That is slightly different, in that it was not age related. This information I learned in a class that I took at our junior college in metallurgy, taught by a nuclear physicist who was the expert witness for the prosecution. I could not find my notes from the class so this is from recollection.

I know nothing of metalurgy so I speak only of the risks I'm willing to take based on the experience of many shooters in Europe and the US.

I have a 16 gauge Joseph Lang built in 1866 with replacement damascus barrels by James Woodward most likely from 1872 or earlier.

I have a 12 gauge J&W Tolley with the original damascus barrels that dates between 1887 and 1894.

The Woodward barrels on the Lang were reproofed at 900 BAR in 1990. The Tolley was reproofed at 850 BAR in 1989. The Birmingham Proof House obviously had no concern about the barrels because they passed both view and proof firing and they applied the marks indicating reproof.

I shoot both of these guns and have no concern that the barrels will fail - provided, of course, that I shoot appropriate low pressure loads.

Age (chronological time) embrittlement is not an issue with plain carbon steels such as used in older fluid compressed steel barrels, twist, and damascus. Fatigue embrittlement would require millions of cycles at the level of strain which barrels in good condition experience with firing.

If Remington was using some alloy other than plain carbon steel, and I expect they were, this would be a separate issue.

Good answer Rocket. I knew you'd come through.
Is there any reason high mileage barrels wouldn't exhibit strain hardening?

Embrittlement of barrel steel from age is an old wive's tale. Rocketman knows of what he speaks.

Short answer, probably Not.

Long answer, A court of Law has no realtionship to Physics or Metalurgy, so we will dismiss the Rem suit.
For fluid steel as correctly Posted as long as the stress applied and resulting strain are within the Plastic Deformation limits, the barrel will always return to its original dimensions and be fully functional for the next cycle. Some steels have a Theortical Limit below which they do not exhibit fatigue. BUT and this is the big BUT, turn of the century metalurgy was an almost archmical process with not much actually understood about why things happen, so your barrel would be judged on an individual basis. In other words if it doesn't fail its good, if it does fail its not good. The movements in the steel lattice structure are only visible under Transmission Electron Microscopy and require a destructive examine, i.e a slice of the barrel.
So basically, newly manufactured gun barrels are immune from fatigue and brittle failure but for an older gun, who really knows. If truly in doubt, that is why the Brits Re-Proof older firearms.-Dick