Always Safety Check Your Parker Before Shooting

[Elvin Ehrhardt]

Ed Early barrels used on Parker Bros and other shotguns made during the 1800s were limited to types of Twist, Laminated, Bernard, and Damascus Steel barrels that were all made by taking three to four pieces of half inch steel rods that were heated to red hot and hammer welded together then heated again and hammer twisted and welded around a round steel mandrel the approximate size of the desired barrel. This heating, twisting and hammer heat welding continued until the full length of the barrel was formed. The barrels I am talking about here were formed that same way using Damascus rods. The delamination I am referring to in my post is where some of those old hammer heat welds are coming apart or de-laminating, inside the barrel just ahead of the chamber. It is difficult to say what is causing this, but since the location is just above the chamber, it is likely that pressure from firing has contributed to wearing out the pictured weld that was created over 145 years ago when those barrels were made. As I mentioned, the delamination-lamination hasn’t made it all the way to the outer surface of the affected barrel, but it is sufficiently visible to make that barrel unsafe to be fired again even with lite loads. My alternative was to fit new sub-gauge tubes into the old barrels so the gun can still be used.