Bill and Chuck, remember the Parker letter that John Davis published on this website that essentially stated that in order of barrel wear resistance, from most easily worn to most wear resistant, it was

damascus
Bernard
Acme

Acme was the only fluid steel grade considered. Likely wear resistance equates to hardness and dent resistance as well.

Damascus has more dents because it has been around longer. Many Damascus guns were relegated to the scrap heap before we rescued them. My old 1887 Lefever doesn't have any dents.

Bruce
That is one beautiful gun. Thank you and Sir C fore sharing it.
David

Bruce: I think that your hypothesis is sound. An AH from that period with Damascus barrels would have to have been someone's "Dream Gun".

Bill: I believe that if Damascus barreled Parker's tend to have more dents than steel it is, probably, because they have been around longer and been on more hunting trips.

Best Regards, George

I took a good fall out bird huning three weeks ago, and my RBL-16 took the worst of it. In my own feeble mind I'm sure that had I been using one of my vintage guns the barrels would have been dented, but the RBL's barrels are only scratched. Two big gouges out of the wood near the head on the right side too. The RBL seemed to find the rocks, while I was pretty well cushoned by the heavy CRP grass.

Wow!! That is some fine AHE-Grade!! I'd sure make safe room for that gun.

You have those big rocks out there to gouge barrels and stocks. Back here we have those deep badger and coyote holes in the middle of dense CRP, and you don't see those things until you are leg deep in one with the gun on the ground. I'm always afraid I'll break a stock. I brief the people who hunt with me to be careful of those holes and I'm usually the first to fall in one.
Be careful and I'm glad you weren't hurt.

That is a beautiful gun! That gun needs to be taken out for some box birds, ASAP!
Thanks for the post.

I'll say this much for this board, it's made me a damascus barrel nut! Just bought a 20 GH with damascus barrels, I don't know much about it yet but I should later this week.
What a gorgeous gun this gun post here is, maybe the prettiest double I've seen. A board member on here sent me some stunning photos though of some of his damascus and twisters. He's the one that put the non-fluide steel bug in me! Jerry

Me too. They sure are great looking guns. The only problem is that people are starting to think that they can shoot them.:crying:

Know those badger holes well. I always wonder what the probabilities are to actually find that relatively small hole in that rather large expanse of land. Whatever they are, I find a couple every year. I spent close to a half hour trying to extricate myself from one. The boot toe had bent back and the fit of boot to hole was very tight. I was a mere couple hundred yards from the car but out of sight of it. It was a day that Kay was sitting there totally unconcerned about how long I would be walking around the area. I burned a lot of hiking energy just working on wiggle/pull and only gaining minimal distance. Just told Kay I didn't see anything and we carried on. She worries too much :)

Back to the beautifl AHE. After all the education provided on this forum, other than the beauty of that gun, the first thing that struck me is that the indexing of some screws is off. The inference from that is that the gun has been opened up but not quite properly re-assembled. Is this a valid conclusion from the pictures?
Cheers,
Jack