doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What is it about Damascus?

My Dad. He was orphaned in 1929, and orphans joined the military back then. He told my brother and I that he did enough service for both of us, and to not feel obligated to enlist like he did. That said, he loved his Corps.

Dad has been gone awhile. Miss him terribly this time of year.

Best,
Ted

Parabola is spot-on about his earlier assessment here of non-fluid steel guns. Anything that takes three men something-like two days (and over 30-lbs of metal) to make captures vast-amounts of human focus and energy. If any firearm has "soul" it is because of this large investment of human time, combined with that other set of intangibles...the "art & skill" to create it. That is what I see when I look at fine damascus guns. It's not that the modern stuff misses me (it clearly doesn't) but when I view and then handle an artifact (from arguably two centuries ago now) that still functions perfectly as designed, and with all of that "art" and "skill" on full-display, I'm sensing something else going on too. Is that how "soul" is defined? For me, I suppose it is.

Brand, spankin’ new vice you got there.

It’ll go good with your others vice's. Enjoy.

Best,
Ted

Lloyd, while we have photo and video evidence of Damascus Barrel Makers laboriously forge welding barrels one at a time, it seems evident that as time passed, barrel makers were able to find ways to streamline or eliminate a lot of the tedious and time consuming hand labor. The late DoubleGunShop member Pete Mikalajunas, who probably knew more about Damascus barrels than any man alive or dead, explained to us how the process evolved from a couple skilled blacksmiths working small forging operations, to large operations like Laurent Lochet-Habran (LLH) or Heuse-Riga Fils (H.R.F.) being able to economically produce literally millions of Damascus tubes. To a large degree, the small hammers anvils, and forges were replaced by steam and water powered trip hammers and hot rolling mills. It's a crying shame that Pete's Damascus website died when he died.





Having spent years working in industrial maintenance and automation, I'm certain that the process could be even further mechanized and automated, with CNC robots stacking billets or lopins, and computer controlled mills and forging presses doing even more of the work of rolling and twisting ribbands. And I am just as confident that we will never see this sort of mass production of Damascus, because it would still be extremely costly in a time when even fluid steel replacement barrels cost five figures, and there just aren't enough of us who appreciate it, or could afford it. I've read that even a farm implement mostly machine made L.C. Smith shotgun had something like a full month of hand labor involved in its' production. And that explains to me why even they have more "soul" than any modern CNC machined and laser engraved gun ever will.

I took the William Powell and Colt 1883 out shooting 5 stand today. December 19, and it was 50 degrees, sunny and no wind. I had just gotten the Colt and wanted to shoot it. What a great time, even with the drop on the stock, I was able to bust a bunch of clays.

Looking at them in the rack and on the table, I still get charged with the look of damascus. The Powell is still a nicer gun with the hammers, but I shot as well with the Colt today.

I still had a hard time dealing with this weather in December…

"Having spent years working in industrial maintenance and automation, I'm certain that the process could be even further mechanized and automated, with CNC robots stacking billets or lopins, and computer controlled mills and forging presses doing even more of the work of rolling and twisting ribbands. And I am just as confident that we will never see this sort of mass production of Damascus, because it would still be extremely costly in a time when even fluid steel replacement barrels cost five figures, and there just aren't enough of us who appreciate it, or could afford it. I've read that even a farm implement mostly machine made L.C. Smith shotgun had something like a full month of hand labor involved in its' production. And that explains to me why even they have more "soul" than any modern CNC machined and laser engraved gun ever will."


What do you think of Purdey's work with modern damascus produced by this firm: https://damasteel.se/
https://www.purdey.com/pages/our-bespoke-models-the-damascus-gun

On the Purdeys, I love the Damascus on the barrels, but I’m not a fan of it on the action. Regardless, it’s great to see them bringing it back into gunmaking.

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.

I would think it was done simply to illustrate the potential of the Damasteel medium, a show gun. I don't like it much either.

Love your comments, but what are your thoughts on Damasteel? https://damasteel.se/ Have a look at the patterns they can produce, consider the possibilities.

Modern, mass produced damascus. No issues with strength, or so I understand.

DropLockBob: The knives are really sharp (I have several) and all Damascus looks good to me (for some reason?).

It's my understanding that even the infamous Viking swords of the Middle-ages were treasured because they were Damascus as well. How Damascus steel (or Wootz steel) ended-up in nowhere Scandinavia way-back then is quite the mystery to me (I'm sure there's some theory about it all somewhere). Damascus is pretty neat stuff and I'm glad somebody is still making things with it. More power to them.