I know the general concerns about shooting Damascus and then combine that with extreme age plus barrel wall thickness plus pits, dents etc. and you end up with a dicey proposition. This is also assuming only shooting moderate to light black powder loads.
My question is only concerning chamber end issues.
How much strength to a chamber area does shooting full brass shells contribute to the safety factor as opposed to paper or plastic shells?
If there is some contribution, then would having some custom brass shells with a little thicker wall dimension add even more to the safety factor? To go a step further how about custom 4140 steel shells?
I feel stupid even asking this as the answer seems so obvious to me I feel I must be missing something just as obvious.
