My theory has always been that the gun manufacturers wanted to discontinue the use of Damascus for bbl steel, because of the tremendous amount of labor required to manufacture a quality set of bbls.
(I've made some of my better deals on guns, because of having Damascus, or twist steel bbls, btw)
Using fluid steel probably cuts the labor costs of building a gun in half. From a strictly marketing standpoint, it would have made total sense to the gun makers to promote the "Damascus is dangerous" bogeyman, because it would automatically make a whole generation of existing guns obsolete.
I wouldn't put it past gun makers of the day, to capitalize on the Damascus scare to sell more guns. I'm glad they did, as there are a lot more guns out there for our consumption.
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