No wonder we were afraid of Damascus
 

While cleaning up the Man Cave this morning I happened to look closely at some vintage shotgun ammo that I have. Both the Winchester 12 Gauge and the Peters 20 Gauge boxes have warnings posted on the box not to use this ammo in Damascus or Twist Barrels. The Winchester warning even warned that the "reloading of the spent hulls is Prohibited! Good luck enforcing that one. :)

I really liked that brand of shells especially the peters....charlie

Related to this topic, I found it interesting that my 20 gauge 2.5" ultralites from the recent inventory of RST have the note not to use in damascus barrels

Charlie they are nice loads. Both are paper hulls. The 20 gauge loads have a small round sticker on the crimp with the shell length and shot size on it.

It is a bit ironic everyone reads #1 and thats usually what gets talked about but #3 is actually what causes the majority of failures in shotgun barrels.

That warning was originally about increasing gun sales but today it’s all about liability, even with RST low pressure stuff.





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If i recall correctly the warning came about in the 1930's yet smokeless powder had been in use for many years. If so why the lag in the warning of 25 years?

Many of the shotgun manufacturers owned at least 1 brand of ammo and/or powder manufacturing plants.





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Did the damascus warnings all begin at the same time? Can you say collusion?

As i wrote earlier, the timing is suspect. I do not recall dates but the advent of smokeless powder was in the early 1900's when the majority of guns were composite barrels and the warning did not come about until the late 30's. If it were as dangerous as later stated many guns would have failed in that time but we only see warnings to load by weight not volume as black was loaded.
Remember an article by Jack O'Conner calling them bombs ready to explode and saying you were playing Russian roulette using them. Ad's for rebarreling by makers who a few years before advertised their guns as smokeless proofed suddenly reversed course and said they were not fit to use.
It was depression times and new gun sales were down. Marketing at its best.Along with the collusion of the press and ammo companies