An added note I'll include about Washington barrels. There is an obvious lack of visible inclusions in the Wrought Iron. In general, they usually color fault-free. It appears that this may be due to the higher steel content of the tubes. This also may explain why the Riband welds color dark instead of white. DocDrew, have you tensile tested a Washington section? Scrap Washington tubes are hard to come by, but I'd hypothesize that they may be stronger due to the higher steel content.

It's possible that they may have been developed not only for their looks, but to provide stronger tubes as dense smokeless powders became more popular.

Regards
Ken

Last edited by Ken61; 05/11/16 09:13 AM.
I prefer wood to plastic, leather to nylon, waxed cotton to Gore-Tex, and split bamboo to graphite.