Walt,
Thank you. I did not want to quote you.
I have been though every public record I can find regarding American produced damascus. There were very few who could accomplish this under taking. Those efforts that achieved this did not survive long enough to produce much quantity. EDM and I spent many hours going over the whole Wesson barrel issue. The best we could determine was that John Blaze was recruited by Wesson to produced English style tubes. When the effort folded, EDM believed that at most 100 sets of unused tubes were sold off to Parker. From census records, passenger manifests and immigration records, he appears to have remained in the USA, but was no longer producing damascus.
The leading expert in the world on damascus is Manfred Sachse. I strongly urge anyone interested in the topic to purchase his book: Damascus Steel: Myth, History, Technology, Applications. Go to page 236 and take a look at the photos. A massive setup, and yet this is small compared to the golden age of full production.
You simply can not stand at a forge with a bucket of used horse shoe nails and hammer out enough damascus to barrel hundreds of guns. The required infrastructure of mining, smelting, rolling, water driven auto-hammers, grinding, etc leaves a huge footprint even in the historical record whether written or in family / communal memory. Sasche opens his book with a map of locations around the world that could achieve this. Granted new information has surfaced since he authored his opus. He also has a broader view of the subject, one that is well beyond the scope or interest of most here.
He does identify 3 geographic areas in England for this production; Birmingham, Sheffield and Sutton Hoo.
Pete
