Mike,
I'm sure that as you said, there were many Damascus barrel guns that never saw a black powder load. From family experience I know my Grandfather's 1890-vintage heavy 3-frame 12-gauge PH-Grade digested many many cases of Super-X and Federal Hi-Powers living on a farm in Minnesota with six growing boys. According to the family oral history Grandpa tried one of those new fangled Winchester Model 1897 pump guns but couldn't get use to it, so traded it off for this 1890-vintage Parker Bros. at Kennedy Bros. in the Twin Cities in 1901. My Father and Uncles would talk of Grandpa going by the Federal plant and getting buckets of slightly blemished shells, Federal "seconds" that they all shot in the old Parker. Similarly my Father shot nothing but factory smokeless loads in the three Damascus barrel Remington doubles he owned over the years. I doubt my Father, Grandfather and Uncles never gave a thought to pressures or chamber length. They were convinced that those Damascus barrel warnings on shell boxes were attempts by the manufacturers to sell new guns!
Drew has probably looked more closely at the old shoot reports, but I don't recall seeing a listing of a single shooter at the GAHs at live birds in the late 1890s and early 1900s using black powder. Capt. A.W. Money came to the U.S. in 1890 and began producing American E.C. and Schultze smokeless powders. I'm sure there were others before that. I seem to recall that Wood smokeless powder came out in the mid-1870s. It is all probably in one of Ed's books.
Dave
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