Drew, To claify...Decarbonized steel was left over musket barrels from Parker Bros. contract with the US government during the Civil War.

Both decarbonized and plain steel barrels are considered by many to be unsafe to shoot.

Hmmm..."crystal steel" begs the question 'what exactly is crystal steel?'

Is it possible that through some process the molecular structure becomes 'crystallized' like the examples we've seen of the burst stronger(?) Damascus steel barrels that seem more to fracture irregularly rather than split (usually longitudinally) as we see in burst fluid steel barrels??

i beleave i have this figured out now...remington was probably the makers of the plain steel barrels....carbonized steel seemed fairly strong after reading about how it was made...do i have this right....thanks for the info....one thing i figured out a plain steel barrel gun is rare but not worth a whole lot... charlie

Thank You Drew. Page 503 and 504 of the "Parker Story" talks of Remington possibly making the decarbonized barrels for Parker. A little later Parker changed the name to Plain Steel as Remington was using the name "Decarbonized" on their newly introduced double gun.

Also the authors believe that the "Gun Iron"barrels were made from surplus musket barrels being first used in the"Charles Parker Makers"guns and then carried over to the "Parker Bros" guns for a short time.

Drew...Thanks again for all your research.