Food for thought
 

Just talking to another PGCA member, about damascus barrels. I have found and also heard of others who have a steel barreled Parker that the serialization book says is damascus, A lot of these were probably sent back to Remington because the mindset was that damascus was dangerous to shoot thus rendering the gun useless. The Remington factory if you inquired about Damascus would send you a letter saying how dangerous damascus was and should not be used. I have a letter like this that was sent to an individual that inquired about his damascus barrels.A lot of barrels were sent back to the factory to be changed out with steel barrels, Sometimes a date code will specify such, other times no date code and you have to guess. My question is what happened to all the damascus barrels that were replaced with steel? all the major gun factories eventually went to some sort of steel barrels some used interesting marketing to aid sales. I think most was just that, a marketing ploy to increase price on a certain steel, I guess most of these beautiful damascus barrels were destroyed can you imagine between Parker, Smith, Ithaca,and the other manufactures just how many that amounts too! Just thinking Gary

Two points:
First, fluid steel barrels were a LOT cheaper to make. THAT was the driver to move away from Damascus. In a word, the issue was profit. Not public safety.

Second, Yes. ALL those "dangerous" Damascus barrels had to be destroyed/melted down for railroad spikes, etc. You can't dis an object for alleged danger, then allow a secondary market for it.

Lawyers won't allow that...

I have two such letters from managers at Remington addressed to Parker customers. We can't be sure if they just believed the hype that had been foisted on the shooting public since about the turn of the century - or if they really knew the truth but perpetuated the lie for the sake of profit...?

From what I understand, Babe DelGrego had first-hand knowledge of hundreds of Damascus and other composite barrels that, at the time of the cessation of Parker production or soon thereafter, being hauled out the back door along with lots of other 'obsolete' parts and machinery and buried there just behind the building. This was told to me by Lawrence recently.






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Parker- America's Finest Shotgun by Peter H. Johnson
"All of these barrels and tubes used by the Parker were made in and around Liege, Belgium. So far as the knowledge of still-living Parker officials goes, none were ever successfully made in the United States. These barrels, which were imported as 'rough tubes,' with a low tariff were reasonable in price and very beautiful; but with the advent of progressive burning powder after World War I they were doomed as they were unsafe to use with these new and more powerful powders. So at that time Parker Brothers, certainly not to be left behind by such a plain and inescapable necessity, discontinued the use of them and started making their own barrels from the latest American steel that had been developed during World War I.
It is interesting but hardly surprising to note that when Parker changed from figured barrels to those made of fluid steel the factory officials destroyed under a hammer all the barrels that they still had in inventory rather than run the risk of these barrels ever being used."

I suspect any remaining 'rough forged tubes' went to the WWII steel collection.

Maybe they went here?
http://www.peterdyson.co.uk/acatalog...S_BARRELS.html

I suspect that Mr. Johnson may have been innocently perpetuating the 'Dangerous Damascus' myth that we all know today to be untrue. A great many of us shoot Damascus barreled guns with modern powders. The thing we have learned NOT to do is to reload our own shells with a weight-equivalent measure of modern progressive smokeless powder that was measured in black powder back in the days before smokeless.


I would suspect that had fluid pressed steel barrels been in use during the time that the modern progressive burning powders were developed and put on the market, there would likely have been a lot of blown fluid steel barrels... and what would the gunmakers have blamed it on then???





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those are unfinished tubes - new old stock he found somewhere

Greener just did some new guns with recently discovered original tubes

Robin: Peter has been at the Vegas show in years past, with some of his tubes. If I run into him, I'll ask.

I hope you mean Peter Dyson, not Peter Johnson!

Last time I visited Greener's David Dryhurst, he told me he'd found a trove of "NOS" Damascus blanks up in Scotland. They were well over a century old. Maybe Dyson's hoard is related to that treasure...