Fellows, thanks for considering these important issues.
I got several emails from forum members about their gun clubs moving to non tox ammo and how that seemed to be a disturbing and coming trend. If we don't look at these issues, vintage gun collectors are going to find their use of these guns increasingly restricted.
Generally , we are the most well thought out vintage gun collectors organization, in my opinion. If we don't investigate or push for investigation of shooting steel in vintage guns, who will? Not the gun makers , they want to sell you a new gun, just like they did when fluid steel barrels surpassed damascus barrels. We have some good members, maybe the best in the gun collecting community, and maybe we lead the way in serious investigation for the Browning, Winchester, Fox, Smith, etc folks.
The chamber pressure and recoil issues can be addressed in steel loads just like in lead loads.....don't shoot the heavy stuff that whacks you and the gun.
The unresolved and important issues are constriction and barrel streaking. The Roster shot cup is supposed to prevent streaking and bore erosion, so tests demonstrating that in mild steel vintage barrels are needed. The constriction issue may be resolved now, and there may be research already done that we could retrieve. Maybe what we need is a new series in the DGJ dealing with steel in vintage guns. Remember when the shooting damascus article series came out? Before that there were those who had all sorts of misinformation and rumors about black powder, smokeless powder and damascus.
So all we have so far is anecdotal information, some people have courageously admitted good experiences, maybe there is something there, but certainly more investigation needs to be done. I'm thankful that Mark is interested and wants to look more into it. If we can develop an acceptable and doable testing protocol, that would be best.
We have a person with sleeved barrels and his barrel man told him that steel was acceptable in those barrels. Let's think about that. What makes the sleeved barrels more resistant to steel shot than original Parker fluid steel barrels ? Both are mild steel tubes. Parker then later Rem used the best steel available. Was the best steel available then inferior to the steel tubes used for sleeving today?
So, fellows, thanks for keeping an open mind, as we set out to do in post #1.
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