George,

You're clearly not a dumb guy. And I can appreciate your approaching the subject from as scientific an angle as one can. You are not wrong about the obvious number of ways in which Damascus "process" can fail due to fissures.

BUT...and it's a big "but"...in the only real pseudo-scientific tests which were published the failure rate of the best quality Damascus was essentially right where the best fluid steel was. And those pressures were way beyond any standard load of today...and way WAY beyond the types of loads most guys shoot through their Damascus barreled guns (myself included).

What I'm referring to is a series of articles done years ago in the DoubleGun Journal by Sherman Bell and Tom Armbrust. It was NOT diffinitive, but was the best attempt yet documented which sought to really explore the truth.

Not only have a ton of Damascus guns been around since the introduction of smokeless powder, but some were even blued over decades ago by people who thought they couldn't sell a gun with Damascus barrels. Meaning, more than a few people out there have shot guns for years before realizing their gun had 'blued-over' Damascus barrels.

So...purely anecdotally...if the danger was that real, wouldn't there be a slew of news articles going back 120 years by now documenting all the deaths to unwitting gun owners? There should be THOUSANDS of published stories of Damascus guns blowing up like grenades.

Try to do a Lexus/Nexus search for stories on this and you won't get much. And LOTS of guys way older than me, who have been on ranges for decades and may have even actually seen failure incidents will attest that they've never seen one that wasn't most likely the result of some other factor...typically a barrel obstruction. I will bet that MOST have never seen one...in all their years of shooting.

If the danger were THAT acute, the stories would be legion by now. Instead, only the warnings are legion. And I'm not saying this to deny that some barrels shouldn't be shot, or don't have fissures upon inspection. (I once owned a gun with Twist barrels that I judged suspect, and never would fire.) But on the basis of both Bell's tests, and anecdotally, the lack of any REAL preponderance of Damascus failures widespread enough that we can know that the danger is both INHERENT and PERVASIVE in the very Damascus process...I just can't buy it.

Again, I can appreciate your wanting to look at the matter purely on the merits of what science suggests. But I can attest, as can many others, that as a practical matter, Damascus barrels continue to shoot on.

- Nudge