Anything is possible. In reading the description of the manufacturing process, I believe the barrels were assembled and then it says they were kept in inventory until being pulled out when needed and placed in a box with all the other parts for each gun. The picture shown was of a very rough looking assembly with the rough weight marked. No mention is made, I don't believe, of whether they were bored to finished size before or after this step. That in itself would remove quite a bit of weight. I personally would be hard pressed to believe the forend was inventoried with the rough barrels. There are too many instances noted where barrels of a different grade or type were used on a gun, but I have never heard any mention of a case where the forend grade didn't match the reciever. If the forends were included, every gun with mixed grade barrels would have the wrong forend iron.
There is a lot of information that is lost now. For instance, with all the information in "The Parker Story" there is no definitive history of the Parker made barrels. The company is quoted in the late 1870's as stating they were then making barrels as high in quality as the English laminates. In 1882 their catalog had a writeup as to their barrel making process. This was after, by all accounts of the dates, they had quit making barrels. In my reading, it looked to me like a very carefully crafted article that described making any type of composite barrel, but left the impression that they were Damascus. I have tracked enough posts here to locate a significant number of D graded guns with Parker laminated barrels to make me think it was not accidental. Given the reported number of these barrels supposedly made (if the numbers I were given is true) even this small sample would be a significant part of their total manufacture. For myself, I am somewhat convinced that the company at that time really considered these barrels to be a form of Damascus and not the typical laminate in the L grade guns. This would explain a number of inconsistencies and the lack of general information on the subject.
However, at this point it is moot. Unless some lost documents emerge or a record of the entire subject, we will never know.
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