Damascus and Early Guns

[Bruce Day]

Many public and private posters have encouraged me not to leave the Parker forum, and they are right, to not let a couple ruin matters for the rest.

So I thought I would post some damascus issues. First, I want to recommend Dave Noreen's fine post about vintage smokeless powder shotgun cartridges. Some of those are very stout loads indeed by todays standards.

So, I was at Dale Edmunds today, the barrel refinisher, and saw a couple interesting matters that readers here might also find of interest.

First, there are some photos of a very early Charles Daly, one of the first, built using a George Ferris lever cocking action. Ferris was the brother of the Ferris who designed the amusement park Ferris wheel.

Next are a couple barrels interesting because of what not to do. These barrels were first taken to a Kansas City local long time gunsmithing shop, which blasted them with abrasive media and soaked them in some sort of caustic solution. The media blasting creates pits and degrades rib detail. The caustic solution gets under ribs and leaches out ....you can see rust in the seams. Both barrel sets ring loose now.

Then lastly are some barrel sets covered with orange rust as part of the damascus rebrowning process. The upper set is a Lefever , probably G or H set. They are mismatched, a little unusual for Lefever which usually pretty well matched damascus tubes even in lower grade guns. You often see Parker G barrels that have mismatched Damascus patterns.