dt,
I see your point...especially about the wrist...it seems that whenever you find a pitted 1894 for sale, it has a cracked stock where somebody already harvested the good stock for a gun with no pits...I know a guy who bought one cheap... that he described as pitted so deeply inside and out, that the barrel windings looked as though they were beginning to separate in areas. Along with a cracked stock, he bought it for around 60 or 80 bucks, to be used as a destructive test specimen. He bungeed it to a tire and pulling both strings at the same time, he threw everything he could at it...including semi-passable barrel obstructions in the bore (loaded 16 ga shells down a 12 bore). It digested every increased pressure increment situation he could assemble until finally, as doubletrouble pointed out, the recoil drove the barreled action right through the buttstock, and the experiment was over.
That was 5 years ago...maybe he figured out how to rip the damascus barrels by now (without the stock).
I like to err on the side of safety as much as the next guy. I just can't find the correct evidense. Of the burst barrels I've examined only two were damascus and both were reamed silly. Based on those examples, I guess you could say that I don't know the first thing about ripped damastwist...
Blue pilling wall hangers 'til they yield...I wouldn't mind having a run at that experiment myself...I have a Tobin that's probably trembling as I type..
