Lloyd,
Hmm. I don’t know, what I don’t know, but, a pattern welded barrel provides what the engineers refer to as stress risers, and lower tensile strength to boot. If everything goes perfect at the place that loads your ammunition, and there isn’t a thin coat of oil in the bores of your gun left from last season, or, some other simple mishap, maybe, just maybe, .020 is, as our English brothern’ say, “adequate”.
Maybe. The engineers spend a lot of time on the margins, thinking about how to make something just a little bit stronger than it has to be.
This is going to be your kids gun, right?
Let me put this another way. The people who built my Halifax in the very early 1920s used a top flite grade of Siemens Martin steel, and left the walls at no less than .050 the entire length. Those tubes were going to have to contend with French proof that was hovering around 18,000psi, but, the French guys could have made them thinner. They could have.
They didn’t.
Just something to think about.
Best,
Ted
