I am happy to see renewed interest in this post. The information is valuable to all that read it. A problem with picking up in the middle of a thread is you miss the original topic although thankfully it has not gone in a crazy direction nor a political rant. The original post is about safety when shooting Damascus barrels or actually any barrel. Wall thickness is especially important in the first half of the barrel when it comes to safety. Different distances from the breech need certain thicknesses of the barrel wall. Generally the closer to the breech the thicker the barrel walls should be. Assuming there are no defects in the barrel, there are general rules of thumb even though nobody can guarantee, nor should they, the thickness required at various distances from the breech. Although it is important to know that very thin barrel walls, usually found in the last 10 or so inches, are subject to physical damage such as denting but my barrels do not have that problem. My first post made it clear that I know how to measure wall thickness throughout the length of the barrel. The numbers I was measuring and listed in the first post felt a bit thin to me and I was hoping to get responses to that and I did and I thank those who responded. It helped me decide what I would do and that was to shoot it with low pressure loads that I make using previous tested loads.
I think it was Rabbit, G-d rest his soul, from days gone by who advised us not to go too low on the pressure. Advertised pressure is chamber pressure. If I recall, his opinion was that if you went too low in chamber pressure, the pressure down the barrel would not dissipate as much since you needed a certain amount of energy to propel your load down the barrel at the prescribed speed. Please, I did not say the pressure increases down the barrel. Maybe some of you old timers here remember this and can explain it better than I can.
