Opinions on Doll's Heads and other stuff

[Dean Romig]

1.) Regarding Parkers with composite barrels, be they hammer guns or hammerless... I have never seen a set of composite barrels that had a doll's head rib extension made of any kind of composite steel, Damascus, Twist, Laminated, Bernard, or any other. Why is that?? If they could make a full-length rib from composite steel, why not the doll's head extension?
I know that for a perfect doll's head fit it was easier and probably cheaper to make the doll's head a separate piece, filing the front of it where it joined the rib rather than trying to get a perfect fit of the doll's head if it were incorporated with the full-length rib, so I get that.... but why not make the doll's head from a matching piece of composite steel??

2.) Now, if fluid pressed steel was available and the doll's head could be made from it, why did we have to wait for Mr. Joseph Whitworth to finally make barrels with it? Or was fluid pressed steel not available until Whitworth produced it? Were the doll's head extension, horse shoes, wagon wheel rims, tools and machinery made from a steel that wasn't strong enough for shotgun barrels? Was it a problem to bore a piece of steel to make a shotgun barrel? Was it easier, stronger, prettier, to wind a bundle of twisted and hammer-welded ribbands around a mandrel to form the tubes?

We see reference to very early barrel tubes having been formed from cold-rolled steel where there was a weld seam up the length of it but this was nowhere as strong as fluid-pressed steel...

I'm sure this has been asked and answered somewhere... Just looking for some concise reasons and opinions.


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