Drew has quoted this more than once:

“Another thing I learned was that Whitworth steel barrels are not desirable for a heavy day's shooting. The explosion in them makes quite a different sound from that given off by Damascus barrels: there is more ring about it, and I can imagine that this might prove a serious annoyance to anyone who minds the noise of shooting. I have no recollection myself of ever having had a headache from gun-firing. Moreover, the Whitworth barrels become hot much more rapidly than the Damascus; and this is a serious drawback, especially to a man who shoots without gloves. I can well imagine that they last much longer, and are in many ways suited for ordinary light work; but am now replacing them with Damascus, as in all my other guns.” - Lord Walsingham

So, the question is... what's wrong with those damn fluid steel barrels anyway?

I do have a double that has two sets of barrels, one each of Damascus and fluid steel.

I certainly can detect no difference in sound, ring, or anything else with the light smokeless loads I use.

Shall we call BS on this legendary old shooter and author? Or is my experience in the minority?

I cannot tell any difference in the sounds of my damascus and my fluid steel barrels. But then, none of mine are Whitworth steel either, AFAIK.

SRH

I think lord Walsingham had a financial interest in Damascus barrels. I have never heard barrels "ringing" over the muzzle blast. And there would have to be quite a significant difference in heat dispersion rate between the two materials before a discernable difference would be possible. BS in caps on this one.

I think lord Walsingham had a financial interest in Damascus barrels. I have never heard barrels "ringing" over the muzzle blast. And there would have to be quite a significant difference in heat dispersion rate between the two materials before a discernable difference would be possible. BS in caps on this one.

Isn't there another part of the quote where he shot something like 1,070 birds that day? He could have either had a discerning ear...or tinnitus

Right, Dan S. W., this quote was part of Walsingham's comment on the day he set the world record for grouse per one gun (or, to be more precise, four guns in the hands of one shooter). I think it was also the first day when he shot with his Whitworth steel barrels, and if it's so, than the explanation can be purely psychological. He expectedWhitworth barrels to be anyhow different from Damascus, and his brain was unconsciously 'programmed' to look for the difference, but since he found none in the way the gun handled, or the way the birds were falling, the brain registered a difference in sound. And if it registered as "unpleasant", then we may safely guess that good old Tom Grey had a prejudice against fluid steel.

That, or there was some defect in his particular Whitworth-barreled Purdey.

Whatever it was, the claim that "Whitworth barrels have an unpleasant sound" has spread across the globe, including Russia: Leonid Sabaneev makes it in his influential "Hunting Calendar" (1885) - without any reference to Walsingham, of course.

It has long been my experience that when I shoot any of my Parkers with fluid steel barrels they emit a decided "Bang" while all of my Damascus, Twist, Bernard, and Laminated barrels go "Pow" so in my opinion there is a difference and I believe there is a 'deadening' effect to the shock waves through the length of the tubes by the alternating of steel and iron in the barrels' composition.

That's all I can think of but I really do experience the difference.... and no, it's not in my head ;-).

This would be the perfect opportunity for some of you with a large shotgun collection to compare the sound of barrels, by tapping them just as you might to look for a loose rib. The sound will vary, even among fluid steel barrels, depending on length and thickness. But it seems plausible that a difference of pitch could be found between fluid and Damascus which would be more easily recognized without the noise of firing.
The fact that Walsingham might note the difference in use, is not surprising because he was obviously an athlete comparable to professionals of today. Their sensory reflexes surpass the average person.

VF: excellent point. Unfortunately my roaring cicadas and jingle bells make auditory discrimination a challenge but having "rung" lots of barrels it is my opinion (worth no more than anyone else's) that pattern welded barrels "ring" more like a bell (richer, deeper tone) and fluid steel more like a chime.
And we must keep in mind Lord Walsingham was unlikely to have been using ear protection, and shot out in the field with some separation from the next shooter/peg, unlike clay target shooters.

Any idea why this may be so, Drew?

I seem to recall that the Damascus analysis on that failure you investigated a couple years ago returned the result that the material was essentially 'homogeneous'.

Uh...no clue...the cicadas in my head claim it's heterogeneous amplitude harmonic oscillation

Different elastic tension?

http://daggy.name/carillon/batmbook/chapter5.htm
Every solid body has a certain degree of elastic tension which, together with its density, determines the velocity of longitudinal vibrations running through it. This is expressed as V = (E/D)½, in which V represents the velocity of longitudinal waves (in effect, the speed of sound through the material), E is Young's Modulus, or elastic tension in a solid, and D is the density value (mass per unit of volume). Using this formula, the speed of sound in a given solid V is obtained as a figure equal to the square root of the quantity produced by dividing Young's Modulus E by the density of the mass D. Therefore, the longitudinal vibrations in metal are proportional to the square root of the metal's elastic tension and inversely proportional to the square root of its density. All other modes of vibration in the material are correspondingly proportional to the longitudinal rate.

The steel is pattern welded barrels was very low in carbon; AISI 1002 - 1005 low alloy "mild" steel.

“Gun Steels” in 1891
https://books.google.com/books?id=-c8xAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA196&dq

.......Witten....Whitworth.....Vickers
C......0.47.......0.30 - .42.....0.24 - .27
Mn.....0.41......0.24 - .31.....0.22 - .23

I have an extremely lightweight French made 16 gauge guild gun with ~27" fluid steel barrels. I shoot mostly 1oz Federals through it and though the gun kicks extremely hard it has a very quiet report. It's so quiet that friends I've hunted with have asked about it. I'm not sure if this adds anything to this thread or not.

Steve

Send me a chunk of barrel and I'll do a composition analysis Steve Maybe "mild steel"?

I just did this test for you Volleyfire.
Four sets of sound barrels, all 12g SxS, thirty inch.
Webley & Scott, Damascus has a low note.
E. James, Twist is a bit higher note.
I. Hollis & Sons, Steel is a note higher
W. Cashmore, Steel is noticeably a couple of notes higher again.
The Hollis barrels are 3" chambered & heavy, while the Cashmore is 2 3/4 chambered & lighter.

I do know that on a nut farm where I used to shoot pest control that the boss could tell which of my guns I was shooting on the day. This was using the same ammo & each gun shot to a different note.
O.M

anyone else been on the nut farm?

Steve,

If you read comments made about me elsewhere, you will think I may be king of the nut farm...but every answer is not always simple.

Thanks for running the test Moses. It seems that there may be some real validity to Walsingham's statement.

Rockdoc your French gun really puzzles me. Is it over-bored?

Drew, that is a pretty complex bit of info, but I believe I got the basics. Given that, do you believe that cryo treating a barrel improves its function?

VF: with enough bananas even a monkey can be taught to cut & paste ; that does not imply comprehension thereof!

I don't get this stuff either, and it's in non-deep-thinkin'-Missourian!
http://epic.physics.missouri.edu/PDF%20Files/Physics_of_Wind_Chimes-KimB.pdf

Drew,

That is pretty funny. Despair not. I just spent a week being called a monkey's uncle for relating what I thought I understood.

I used to practice with a world champion shot. He would never voluntarily tell anyone, anything. One day I asked him why. He said, "They won't appreciate it." The older I get...

Possibly it could be that the bore diameter on most Damascus barrels I have owned(mainly Lefevers)was usually about .005 larger than the fluid steel barrels. Also, back when I shot A.H. Fox guns with Chromox barrels, I had more than one fellow shooter on the dove field comment on how they rang. They said they could hear them all the way across the field.

VF: "No one wants advice - only corroboration." John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

And those most in need thereof are usually the least receptive

As I recall Nash Buckingham's Fox HE Bo Whoop achieved its nickname from the way it sounded across a Duck Marsh.
Several of my early Lefevers are overbored more like a gauge than by .005". That is a 12 is bored to approximately 11 gauge or around .750". I suspect it was intended for use with brass shells, thus oversized wads. do not know that of itself would cause a change in the sound.

I don't presently own a Damascus-barreled shotgun (a situation I hope to someday rectify, yet-again) but...the three braided-steel guns I've owned and shot regularly (so-far) seemed to have a perceptibly softer report than my fluid-steel guns. I don't shoot very many targets, so this is primarily hunting situations. I am well-aware of how certain environmental conditions (i.e., a coating of fresh and soft snow) can tend to muffle sounds and in some cases I'm sure this was a contributing factor. The loads being used may also be a component for at-least the first gun (I was hand-loading then). Since that first gun (a Lefever G grade), however, I have consistently used RST loads in all my fine guns, both Damascus and fluid-steel. In my humble opinion, there was a sound component missing when I was shooting damascus guns. A fairly high-pitched "ringing" immediately after the shot which I now associate with fluid steel.

Drew, I looked at the wind chime link.
Now when I did the test for "Volleyfire" I suspected something like that going on & that is why I used all 12g 30" barrels.
I hung them side by side & tapped them at varying places up & down them but the note differences stayed about the same.

Back to the nut farm (Pecans). The boss called my Julian Arana. Eibar, "La Sorda" 12g with 28inch barrels, the howitzer.
I would like to hear Bo Whoop & The Howitzer & the Fox Chromox from across a duck marsh.
O.M

Jim Kelly, Darlington, SC gunsmith who restocked Bo Whoop, and actually made the world aware of it's existence, took Bo Whoop to a river swamp with some duck loads and had an associate fire it while he waited several hundred yards away and listened. He told me he could discern no unusual tone to the report of the gun.

Maybe it had something to do with the lay of the land (water), possibly it was a particular duck load of the day, ..........or maybe it was a fanciful tale made up by Col. H. P. Sheldon.

SRH

Possibly relevant to the intensity and quality of sound over the duck marsh in the winter, or Blubberhouses Moor

https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/effects-of-temperature-humidity-live-sound/
Because it is less dense, sound passes through hot air faster than it passes through cold air. For this reason, temperature gradients cause refraction effects. Morning is a time when the ground is still cool from the night before but the upper air is already warming due to the sun. Under these conditions, sound can bounce between the gradient and the ground, forming regions of higher and lower sound intensity.
Also, as sound propagates through air, the air absorbs energy from the sound wave, attenuating (weakening) it. The effect is significant only at frequencies above 2 kHz, and increases with frequency. This is the reason why when we hear thunder in the distance it is only a low rumble. The high frequency “crack” has been attenuated more rapidly than the low frequency portion of the noise.
The attenuation of sound in air is affected by the relative humidity. Dry air absorbs far more acoustical energy than does moist air. This is because moist air is less dense than dry air (water vapor weighs less than air).

El mas y mas sordo

Why does sound travel so much better under water, water is certainly denser than air.

These physicist fellers sound smart Miller
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-sound-travel-faster-in-water-than-air

I gave up at the anomalous transparency phenomenon and acoustic coupling at points of water and air interface part

According to Nash Buckingham, himself, the name Bo Whoop was given by the black guide who often poled his skiff. One day Nash waded off through the reeds and came back with a heavy stringer of birds.

The guide said that he knew Nash was having good shooting because he could hear that big gun go bo-whoop. At the time Nash was lauding John Olin's 3" Super X, so the impression was given that the primary difference in sound was due to the power of the shells.

Nash had a close relationship with Olin and never missed an opportunity to praise any Winchester product.

That was Ho'ace Miller - Yassuh Mist' Nash!

Dam16,

Well done! I love Nash's writing but could not remember Horace's name. He had at least two fellows who worked with him for years at a stretch, but I believe Horace was his favorite, and the one he credited with saving the life of his wife during a storm. It has been decades since I read that book. It was a time that I would love to have seen.

I would be fascinated to know how a pair of steel tubes solidly fixed together on not one but two sides by soldered ribs would be able to "ring" so massively dampened? I checked this out on several different assembled guns with a brass hammer and all I got was tap tap tap. Maybe Italian steel doesn't have that Limey chimey quality.

But Wonko... traditional lore trumps empirical observation every time.

The only time I've heard barrels ring, actually a fairly low pitch vibration, is when some idiot slams a gun shut. It sounds a tad like a diving board.

I attribute it to a cry of pain.

word !

Actually I've had three guns that made a ringing sound when fired. A member of the club I belonged to at the time had one as well and he called it a "singer". The ones I had were two 682 Berettas and a Perazzi MT6 with barrels too long to bother keeping so I have none of the three now. I found the sound irritating enough to justify flipping the lot. I did some serious searching trying to find the source of the ringing and never did find a way to eliminate it. All three are coil spring hammers tho so there is no rebounding element like a leaf spring usually has. I decided that the ringing was from the hammers striking the action. I didn't really try to test that at the time since it was easier to just get rid of them.
But some guns do "sing" for sure. Been there, done that.

Well, I can hear the locks.

A Rottweil has a distinct 'ping'.

Come to think of it, there are several guns I could identify by just the sound of the firing mechanism, but I've never attributed any specific sound to the barrels.