Gentlemen,
Mandates requiring non-toxic shot are coming. Those requirements may take decades to enact but they are coming. Will our Parkers then be only personal museum pieces?
As wisely stated, if you do not want to risk your barrels do not shoot steel in a Parker. What if a Parker has no barrel constrictions (chokes) or a small constriction such as IC/.010"? Would there be a risk? Let's consider risk... If I really wanted to drive fast my car would reach 130MPH, or so I have read. This would be safe on a race track providing I would wear a helmet and could handle the car at that speed. I would not however drive at 130 MPH on the highway because I do not want to risk my life or endanger others not to mention going to jail… Now, did your wife or girlfriend ever tell you to “Slow Down!”? If so, she did not accept the risk that you had. Undertaking risks is a personal decision which everyone has to make. There is risk in shooting steel shot in a Parker because we have few data points to indicate that it may be a very low risk.
A significant fact from Tom Roster's Shooting Sportsman article stated that he patented a new wad design making steel shot safe for modern guns in 1987. When the market demands someone will develop a wad making it safe to shoot steel shot in vintage guns. Or, do wads capable or protecting old, tightly choked barrels from damage from steel shot presently exist?
After witnessing a full choke (later measured at .030” and 035”) Damascus Parker shoot factory steel shot #4's, and in hearing from well known member of the LC Smith association that he regularly shoots #4 Hevi Shot in his LC Long Range choked at .040", I became very curious. Their barrels did not split but would mine? I know from recovering 12 gauge Hevi Shot wads that each petal is about 1/10" or .100" thick. Hmmm, .100" is more than twice the constriction of the tightest of vintage SxS chokes! NOTE: At the time the subject Parker was firing steel shot the shooter mistakenly thought the gun has less than modified (<.020") chokes.
To date there has been NO statistically significant research conducted concerning shooting steel shot in vintage SxS’s. Why would there be? We all need buy a NEW $1500 autoloader with a camo coating to be able to bag a few Mallards! Allowing for marketing hype let's consider the evidence. What evidence, all we have is hearsay from most, and a few members who witnessed split or bulged barrels from early steel shot loads. Was the cause mud in the muzzles, or could it have been first generation steel shot, perhaps with pellets rusted together, trying to enter into tight chokes with far too thin wad petals? Do you remember when if we even picked up a Damascus barreled gun our fingers would fall off? Maybe the hype wasn't that bad but I believed it and passed up some great Damascus guns 10-20 years ago... Were Grandpa’s blown barrels caused by smokeless power or was it the spider nest in them? Did great-grandpa mistakenly load second generation smokeless power by the black powder volume method rather than by weight in grains? First generation smokeless power was “bulk” and a one for one volume replacement for black powder.
Now is the time to get the facts rather than continue to believe what we have been hearing for years!
Young's Modulus is the engineering principal stating that everything is a spring. Materials strain, i.e. stretch and regain their shape, all the time. Tall bridges move in the wind. So does my wooden house as it endures near tornado winds. Guess what, so do barrels as a shot/wad column moved down it. Slow motion video shows barrel expanding for the shot as does a snake swallowing an animal. ALL barrels strain, be they old composite such as Damascus or fluid steel barrels of low or high carbon content. What we do not have is empirical evidence for at what point they stress, i.e. are permanently deformed! Only research will provide us this data.
For an upcoming research project to be undertaken by a professional gunsmith and myself as time, test subjects, and funding permits, one hypothesis is that Damascus (or low carbon (old, all Parker barrels) fluid steel) barrels can be strained to pass steel shot using “X” thickness of wad which has the hardness of “Y”. Significant factors in this research will be wad thickness and hardness, shot size, barrel thickness and constriction (choke), pressure at the barrel constriction, amount of strain immediately before deformation, velocity, barrel thickness at every half-inch (and point of failure if any) and of course barrel materials. For Damascus barrels that last factor will be tough but we will be able to determine the type of Damascus. Another hypothesis shall be that good quality Damascus is strong as fluid steel, as demonstrated with one test article each, Damascus and fluid steel, by Sherman Bell in his FINDING OUT FOR MYSELF series printed in the Double Gun Journal.
Please note that this research will NOT consider that modern high velocity steel shot ammunition kicks the heck out of shooters and may very probably crack the a 100 year old stock! There are times even I will shoot an autoloader… I do however want to know what I can and cannot shoot in my Parkers. Note: Pressure and recoil are not the same nor are they mutually exclusive. Recoil is determined by the "ejecta" or total weight and velocity of everything to include the weight of the powder traveling down the barrel!
Will these tests be statistically significant? No. The reason is that a sample set of 50 identical test subjects and factors would be required. We would also have to test to the point of deformation/failure for each load/wad/shot size/pressure...
These tests will however provide empirical evidence toward this debate.
For now, please do not shoot steel in a gun you do not want to risk. As for me I’ll shoot Nice Shot and ITX in my Parkers and Elsie’s. I also will not take my best Parkers in my duck boat. Bad things happen to nice guns in duck boats.
Let your common sense and bank account guide you.
Respectfully,
Mark
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08-13-2011, 09:43 PM
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