When I strain my eyes to look at this rib it appears to me that the wording has been engraved and not rolled, what do you think?

My suggestion would be to put it beside a known roll stamped gun and a factory vent rib gun (if I was informed correctly all vent rib guns were engraved on top the rib) then see which it matches more closely .

I have compared it to my factory vent rib CHE, it looks nothing like it, much smaller. I also compared it to my VH "Flat rib", both the VH & CHE are easy to see and you can tell the lettering has been pressed into the rib, the Damascus rib besides being smaller is a different style of lettering, almost like script and has not been pressed in.

Dan, I can't see the rib that well, but what I see does look like engraving rather than stamping. Regardless, that's a beauty.

It is more 'common', for lack of a better word, on Grade-4 and higher with unusual barrel steel types to see engraved rib legends rather than roll-stamped legends. It is often difficult to discern with the untrained eye the subtle differences. But the true giveaway is the difference between the same letters along the length of the legend. One "S" may be slightly different from another "S" elsewhdere in the legend. An "A" may be slightly different than another "A" and so on. But a dead giveaway might be the scroll engraved at the ends of the legend or maybe a stylized 'arrow' at either end.
I have had a couple of Bernard barreled Grade-4's with engraved ribs....See Below:


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Dan,

I copied and tweaked one of your barrel rib pictures, below.

There are three “R”s in the sequence. Each of them look different to my eye. Look at the tail of the R. The middle one is much longer.

Best,
Brett