The Making of a Spiral Welded Damascus Gun Barrel

Yes, this fellow is a member on doublegunshop forum and has discussed this on that forum. I believe he has made a damascus double barrel pistol of some sort for some type of "master contest". I believe he makes damascus knives etc. if I remember correctly.
 
Makes you wonder how they did them cheaply, by the thousands, with minimal machining, no electricity and 30 inches long a couple hundred years ago.
 
tootall said:
Very interesting, thanks!




Child labour...
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Ayup.
Them too. The whole family worked. 6 1/2 days a week.

Cottage industry,specialization, and being tooled up to make one part or a few similar parts, on contract basis to whoever was the end assembler of the product.

No work, no eat. Freedom! :)

Forge welding nails and old horse shoes in to rods and bars as precursor stock to being welded into twisted rods, was considered to be fit work for a child.

When you do the same job over and over, you get good at it, and you make your money by being fast.

Was kinda disappointed in the video as I was really hoping to see them beating out a shotgun type barrel then reaming it out.

Cheers
Trev
 
Steve Culver is an Master Smith (MS) in the American Bladesmith Society (ABS). He has been making Damascus knives for a long time. The stuff these MS's guys can do is amazing both artistically and technically. Steve made that barrel for a Cut & Shoot (Handgun knife combination). The lock was his own design and built from damascus as well. He did a WIP is on the ABS website.
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tootall said:
Child labour...
Click to expand...

I don't think child labour was used that much, at least in the way we think of it today. Some industries like weaving used kids of 8 or 10 years old to clean out underneath the looms but I think in making damascus barrels, while an apprentice (roughly 14 years and older) was probably used for holding the work and tending the fire and so forth, the welding process was too important to be left to an unskilled person. Iron was extremely expensive prior to the bessemer process of 1854. A gunsmith could not afford to have many barrels fail proof. If my memory is correct, WW Greener commented on something like 20% of barrels failing proof. Also while we associate Belgium with economy grade guns, there was nothing wrong with belgian barrels in my experience. Belgium had a proof system similar to british proof

cheers mooncoon
 
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