earlyriser: I would tend to agree with your assessment. The barrels look great, the action looks weird. Pre-conceived notions perhaps?
When I first started shooting damascus-barrelled guns in the early-mid 90s, the response from my fellow shooters was always interesting, "aren't those things dangerous?" were the usual first-words out of their mouths. Terry Wieand wrote a great article about all the fuss around then as well (he shoots damascus guns too, or at least he did, [https://www.grayssportingjournal.com/damascus/]). With this last gun now coming, it'll be 6 of them over the years. The first one was an American gun (1901 Lefever G-grade Syracuse gun) with the rest being British. I have another American gun in the hands of my favorite 'smith right now (yet another agricultural instrument, a Quality 1 "transitional" LC Smith from 1891) having it's English laminated-steel tubes refinished back to their original "black & white" (it's a heavy brute and will be used mainly for targets). Whether "Black and White" or "Browned", I find them all intriguing to handle and then shoot. I'd already pretty much satisfied myself that the good ones were perfectly safe when the Sherman Bell "Finding Out For Myself" articles were published in the Doublegun Journal in the late 90s, fully cementing the deal for me. I alway, always, always measure the tubes for wall-thickness myself first before firing them (using the tool that I've used for the last 12-15 years now, down at the MW Reynolds shop) as I never entirely-trust my safety to anybody else's assessments. After that, I use them with abandon, but... only on the nicer days (I hate rust) and then only with appropriate loads (about 8,000 psi pressures at the max). In the very early days, I even handloaded black-powder shells for them(!) but the minute I identified some of the many proper nitro loads for them (i.e. RST), I never looked back. To be frank, I worry more about the 100-plus year old wood in these guns than I do about their braided tubes.
Last edited by Lloyd3; 12/20/23 04:01 PM.
