doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Laminated or Twist?

Raimey-got no inside pics. Having enough trouble just figerin' the OUTSIDE!! Likely about 50:50.
And you'll recall ol' W. claimed to have invented Laminated Steel about 1845
In addition, probably not enough stubs available with which to make Stub Twist by 1880.
BTW: had a delightful evening with your Argentina buddy Fri. night at The Flame.

revdocdrew:

He may have claimed to invent Laminated Steel but he was using much older receipes in conjuction w/ a blast furnace, or the like, and removing the carbon content. Being the "difficult man"(coined by Dig as far as I know) he was, he gives no credit to the inventor of the furnace process and really no direction as to what in the world he did. If previous tales are true, old tubes could have been fitted to newer actions so the availability of stubs may not have been a large issue then. The proof may be on the inside of the pudding.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Why Drew? Was this the stuff made from horseshoes?

According to William Greener, father of WW, in "The Gun, 1834" Stub Twist was made of a mixture of horseshoe nail stubs (pulled from the hoof when re-shoeing) & chopped coach springs, the pieces being cut to about the same size as the stubs. The entire mass was placed in a cruciable, throughly mixed, then heated to a welding heat where a ball of the mixture would be pilled out on the end of an iron bar & welded into a bar of suitable size. This would then of course be wound around a mandrel as for other welded bbls. If it was twisted in the bar prior to winding then it was called Stub damascus. Even in 1834 William was bemoaning the increasing use of cast nails for horseshoes which were unsuitable for bbl making. A stub twist bbl made in this manner thus shows a spiral pattern, but consists of many small pieces rather than the continous spiral of "Plain Twist". Lefever referred to the bbls on their H grade as "London Twist" & they have the exact appearence of that in Drew's picture. There is no indication to me that either the bbls in question or the Lefever H bls etc are twisted in the bar, thus would not fall into the category called "Damascus Twist". My understanding of the term "Crolle" was that it was twisted in the bar & was thus a type of Damascus.

Horsenails were being used because they were one of the cheapest items the mills produced. The point being, the barrel makers were working to a price point. The patterns being produced by Greener in 1834 do not have the refinement of much later work.


Greener illustrates Damascus, Mr Wiswould's Iron, Threepenny Iron, Stub Twist, Stub Damascus and Charcoal Iron.

And here is the rub with pattern names. Higny, a contemporary of Greener uses the names Damascus Higny, Twist, Steel Twist, English Damascus Twist and another 15 names / patterns. Each pattern is named in French, German and English. No where does he use the term crolle. Which leads me to believe that term was used by later generations. In reading the Belgian and French literature, I do not see it until the 1880's.

A skelp demonstration barrel looks very different from a damascus demonstration barrel. A skelp example recently sold at auction in London. Missed it by a few pounds.

Pete

Pics of 'Stub Damascus' and Mr Wiswould's Iron, and lot of information here
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfg2hmx7_69dxb227c6

Unfortunately, there was no International Commission on the Standardization and Nomenclature of Pattern Welded Shotgun Barrels, so folks called their barrels pretty much whatever they wanted.
This week, a gentleman is going to take pics of each sample segment in the display in the museum in Ferlach for me so the German/Austrian Damascus Rosetta Stone should soon appear!

The definitions of Damascus such as watering, damask, Oriental Damascus, layer welded Damascus, mechanized Damascus, pattern welded, etc. are varied and many but they all center around the carburization of the metal. For now, an indepth discussion is possibly connected to a noose which is connected to a millstone which will drag this thread into the abyss. On this Earth, nothing is created and nother is destroyed; only the state is changed. Many, many advances are rediscoveries of past technologies w/ innovative, new methods of accomplishing the same designed or sought after state. Much of the info we seek is twisted in a mass of forged metal. To untwist, undo, unforge would probably yield many answers and that is not possible so techniquies have to be replicated to get the end product. Upon exposure to acid, wrought iron resists better than carbon steel. The Brits weren't the first with the novel idea of adding wrought iron and probably lifted the technology from the Spanish. The Spanish possibly lifted it from the Italians who more than like lifted if from the Perisans, from whom the technique could have an origin as defined by the Perisan method for making crucible steel, who were watching the Indians but couldn't recreate the same steel. The Persians could have observed someone else. Here is where the true definition of Damascus has its origin in being from a single homogeneous source. So the Indians were privy to a raw material that just happened to possess a carbon content that after smelting was close to the sought after quality that was developed and forged the path for the industrial revolution as far as carbon content. The term Damascus has been used loosely but is directly tied to a homogeneous single source that upon exposure to acid yields a watered surface pattern.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Ah Hell, we're headed for the abyss.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Raimey's talkin' about Wootz
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfg2hmx7_193fzxsjfw
which probably inspired pattern welded barrels, but is completely different stuff.

It's not really different. It's all the same because of the structure of the metal which is relative to the raw material(source) which just happens to control the strength of the weapon. It all centers around the carbon content and forging techniques.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse