Damascus chambers and steel tubes

[Rick Riddell]

How often do you encounter this? Would this be something done by Parker, seems like it wouldn't be very cost effective to have this done privately.

[Opening Day]

I think what you are talking about is called sleeved barrels, old barrels (damaged or too thin) are cut off and then new steel tubes are mated to the old barrels (chamber area) and welded together. That's a very rough explaination of what sleeved barrels are.

[Rick Riddell]

Now I got it! Makes sense now, thank you!

[Bill Murphy]

This is a very common procedure, one that is getting more expensive every year and adds little value to a good original gun.

[Eric Johanen]

This subject comes up occasionally. Bill is correct that it adds little or no value to a solid original gun. However, with a nice gun that has damaged tubes from either neglect or accident, a nice shooter can be brought back to life. I have several very nice doubles that have been sleeved and with their new tubes are excellent shooters. If they carried their original barrels hey would have been out of my affordability range. Being a shooter first and collector second I do not find sleeved guns much of a bother. If it is a very nice gun, having it sleeved or buying a sleeved gun can be a good way to restore the usefulness and with a quality job one can enjoy it on the course or in the field.

[Hixie]

This picture shows Parker Damascus barrels that have ben sleeved. I know it isn't a great depiction, but hopefully you can see what is shown. I believe the photo can be enlarged by clicking on it. This one was done by Del Grego, I believe.

[edgarspencer]

The process of "sleeving" has been done in England for many years, and well before it was commonplace over here. The English also stamped guns as such, by either the gunsmith, or the proof house.
The term is commonly used, but a bit of a misnomer, as there is another process, where the entire bore of the original barrel is bored out, the whole length, and a 'liner' is partially pressed, partially "shrunk" into place than final bored, honed, and choked. The process is done by Teague, and others.What is refered to as 'sleeving' is also commonly called 'monoblocking'.
Parker Hale, in England, and a company now out of business in Kansas,( Actually, they're not out of business, just not doing the sleeving anymore) known as the 90-06 Armory, commonly bored out guns that were shot out; lacking any rifling, and ran a sleeve down it's entire length. Again, by law, in the UK, this was revealed. '90-06', who got their name, by working almost exclusively on the model 1890, and 1906 Winchester pump .22, would bore from the breach end, to within about an 1/8" of the muzzle, so that the sleeve wasn't apparent. Guns given such a treatment, that had little cash value prior, would be made to be good shooters.

[Southpaw]

Edgar, thanks for adding that background. Very informative. The first gun I ever shot is a 22 short Winchester pump, I think it's a so called gallery gun that was chambered for 22 shorts. It passed down thru the family but rifling on it was and still is shot out. Part of my self appointed duties as a kid was to shoot all the mice around the corn crib with that old gun using rat shot.

My dad used to make me carry that gun with no bullets when first started going with him on quail hunts to learn how to carry a gun in the field. Have a Love/Hate relationship that gun. That was a heavy piece of artillery for a spindly 8 year old kid to drag around for a couple of mile walk and constantly getting reminded how I was carrying it wrong. Still remember thinking at the time quail hunting sucks, but it was a valuable lesson about gun safety.

[Dean Romig]

Todd, that's how I trained my grandson when he first started tagging along on my grouse hunts at age 7. I made him a 'gun' from a shortened .22 rifle stock with a length of 1/2" copper tubing painted black and attached to the stock. I was pretty hard on him about the way he carried it and he learned pretty well, acing the hunter safety course when he was 11. He'll be 13 in May and loves to go hunting with "Grampy" every chance he gets.






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[Dean Romig]

Back to 'sleeving'...

Probably a better word would be 'jointing' as "sleeving" almost seems misleading and "monoblocking" is a misnomer in the case of Parkers and other old doubles where the two barrels, the lug, and the rib extension are four separate pieces. Monoblocking is the process of machining and boring a solid one-piece (mono) block of steel alloy to the shape and configuration to become the breech section of the two barrel tubes, which are then jointed to it.





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