I believe one of Steve's fellow knife makers overcame the 'meandering' hole of a damascus tube by forge welding the pattern material on to solid round stock and then using standard deep hole drilling methods.

His name was Bill Fiorini and I believe his barrels were used by a very few custom gunsmiths over twenty years ago, and he documented the process during some of the seminars he used to do. He relayed the story that he was approached by H&H to produce a set of one off barrels, but the commission never got off the ground.

I don't mean to drift off topic from the nice work shown by Steve here. Thanks for pointing it out Doc Drew.