Hi I would just like to say that the direction Nigel Teague has taken in his method of restoring Damascus barrels for re use is just the start of things to come. It may be as far as he wishes to go using this method but in time some other person or company may take up where he as left off or he may start again in another direction. I do admire his perseverance in getting as far as he did in producing a practical and commercial way of internal lining a shot gun barrel, in the face of all the constraints he had to contend with. Cost was a very big hurdle because not every gun owner could afford to spend cash on a gun with Damascus barrels no matter how beautiful they appeared to be.
Now just food for thought my circle of gun using Engineer friends in conversations over glasses of the “Amber Nectar” on how to keep alive guns using Damascus patterned barrels after a days shooting came up with the following, though not all practical as yet but in time who knows!
Top of the list was lining original Damascus barrels with a Titanium alloy when the right alloy comes along but the high cost would be very prohibitive.
Next was a method of veneering steel tubes with a thin surface layer of Damascus patterned Steel/Iron for new guns, though this as it turned out was not a totally new idea.
And the most approved outlandish idea of all was to copy a three dimensional image of the barrels original Damascus pattern, then sleeve in the conventional way then restore the pattern you had previously copied back on the replacement tubes by laser etching. It is a little outlandish but it has my vote because of the cost aspect and it uses tried and trusted technology with room for improvements. Though the down side is the original barrels would be lost for ever though the up side was that you could have a new gun with a pseudo Damascus patterned barrel for little or no extra cost.
Are there any other ideas readers may have?
