Hand forged Damascus shotgun tube which has had MOST of its machining operations carried out; i.e. the barrel has been drilled and the outside of the barrel has been machined . One tube would be ideal for building into a Single Sporting gun, a pair would be the building block for a Double; I can offer right and left hand twist in the Damascus pattern. The bore only requires minimum honing to bring the tube to a 'mirror finish'
32" Long - .638" bore - 1.100" Breech dia. - .772" Mid barrel dia. - .810" Muzzle dia. - weight 1.75 kg.
The following is an extract from a booklet published by E. Heuse-Lemoine - 'Manufacture of Damascus Gun Barrels'
"..... This work which was very slow gave only an imperfect result with respect to Damas Keening, but it produced the idea that for obtaining a great power of resistance united with the necessary lightness of the sporting gun, the transversal soldering must be highly preferable to the longitudinal, so that, by manual work ribbons were laminated and wound like a spiral as it is practiced in our days. The barrels thus manufactured with good charcoal iron prooved to be already a great progress with respect to solidity, but offered of the Damascus appearance which was visible by certain traces of the spiral produced by the appearance of the fibres or the varnish of the metal. At this time, Paris, that city of luxury, had also its barrel manufacturers such as Bernard, Leclerk etc.who, though small in number, were not less excellent in their art, and it was from Paris that the first imitation came to us for the researches in the combining some mixture of iron and steel in order to produce figures which we call Damascus, such as Turkish Damascus, Bernard, Leclerk and Parisien Damascus etc. to an infinate number of names, as the combinations that compose the figures of the Damascus vary constantly; almost like the designs on our hanging papers in our rooms, with the only difference, that in these the variery is produced by the colours on the surface, whilst the figures on the damascus are produced by the substance or material like the designs or patterns in our linen weavers. What is the Turkish or Curled Damascus, the Horse-shoe nail, the Boston, etc. that are derived from them." ...
