....Reforging a tube would cause a small change to the damascus pattern, though not significant. It would only cause the pattern to be slightly smaller. It would be entirely possible to select a shotgun tube that had a pattern of a size that would look appropriate after reforging.
In Greener's comment about making damascus rifle tubes, he does also state that they were welded of thicker riband. Having thicker barrel walls on ball and bullet barrels would seem to be logical....
Thanks Steve. Somehow, it would seem that good purpose made rifled barrels needed more material on the inside of the barrel. It would have likely needed to be welded on a smaller diameter mandrel, some of them have quite thicker wall thickness than a shotgun tube, but the makers ended up with the correct pattern showing on the exterior.
Some of those pistol barrel pictures have heavily distorted patterns. Probably bottom of the scrap pile and signs of expedient reforging. It would seem that some nicer sub bore shotgun barrels and smaller diameter rifled barrels may have been purpose built. Even careful reforging to a smaller diameter might show the logical elongation of the patterns that were already formed in the larger bore barrel.
Thanks for all the time you take to explain. Beautiful Bowie, very nicely done furniture and finishing.
