I could not see any kind of finish coating on the rib. Whatever it is, its in the metal, and the rib matting was not as sharp as it should be, and to card out the darkness to find the damascus pattern below would have significantly reduced even the existing degraded matting.
I have seen hundreds of damascus barrels, and I have not seen that situation before. Of course Dale has seen many more than me. I appreciate this far predates epoxy coatings, but I looked for some kind of coating like that which might chip off, and saw nothing but what I would describe as clean, but dark, metal. I have no idea what it could be, maybe some kind of dye and a carded matting was a good guess. I did not look at it through a magnifying glass, just with my reading glasses that I have to wear any more because I'm getting too damn old. It could be a coating, but its certainly a coating I am not familiar with.
"Gunsmiths" do strange and wonderous things. Not long ago, he had a rib on an Acme fluid steel 20ga that had been set in with Cerroset, a compound used for casting a chamber shape replica to determine what casing fits in a rifle chamber. The Cerroset came out in globules in the bottom of the boiling tank used to degrease barrels. The gun had to be sent off and the top and bottom ribs taken out, the barrels cleaned between and the ribs relaid. A buyer had no way of knowing in advance by looking at the barrels, and they rang OK.
Last edited by Bruce Day; 06-23-2009 at 09:45 AM..
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