The relative rarity of an occurrence like this is evidenced by the amount of interest in this thread. I for one have never seen a barrel burst, damascus or otherwise, and I hope I never do. Like everyone else, I'll be interested to hear the final autopsy. Sure seems like an overload to me, but I'm no expert. Hard to imagine that level of failure happening from an 8k psi load though, and with that much barrel wall thickness evident.