Did they do it? I honestly do not know. And I do not make the claim that it was done historically. I only demonstrated that it was plausible. What I did find, is that the work of forging an old barrel tube to a smaller diameter is not difficult. Any skilled blacksmith could accomplish this work; and there would have been plenty of these skilled smiths available to do the work during that time period.
making the longer fowler or shotgun barrel was a lot of work - then more work to re forge it
pistols for the most part were a luxury item - with finely made barrels - and a shorter barrel was easier to make in the first place
It would not have been cost effective to make fowler barrels with the intention of cutting them up into short sections for re-forging into pistol barrels. But as I mentioned in the video, there had to be some quantity of shotgun tubes which had a flaw somewhere along their length. The material these tubes were made from, was too valuable to waste. Given the ease at which these tubes could be re-forged, I believe that salvaging the defective fowler tubes to create pistol barrels would have been a logical conservation effort.
At the very least, I provided Peter Dyson and his customers with a workable method to create pistol barrels from the old fowler tubes. We will never know if re-forging tubes into pistol barrels was ever done, unless we find some documentation from that time period stating so.
While my video proves the plausibility of re-forging tubes to different bore sizes, I feel that the most significant thing shown is what it is like to forge this old material. I dont know of any other blacksmith on the planet who has experienced forging old damascus. And I know thousands of smiths. Finally, there is someone who can describe what forging this material is like. As a highly experienced smith, who has made a lot of damascus from modern steel, I can tell you that the old damascus material is a blacksmiths dream to work!
Not to take anything away from the skill of the old barrels smiths, but the material that they were working with is unlike any material we have available today. The old damascus is very soft at heat and easy (in comparison to modern steel) to shape with the hammer. The weldability of the old damascus is amazing. Certainly, the art of creating damascus gun barrels was at least as much facilitated by the material as it was the skill of the barrel smiths.
Ill come back later, to comment more on the old damascus material.
