Re: Old style L.C. Smith barrels? Archived Message
Posted by Researcher on February 16, 2008, 10:35 am, in reply to "Re: Old style L.C. Smith barrels?"
Cutting off old Twist or Damascus or damaged tubes, just ahead of the chamber area, reaming the breech section out and inserting new steel tubes is done on a regular basis by some of our top barrel men here in the U.S. and in the U.K. Likewise Teague will ream barrels out and insert a thin steel liner thus preserving the Twist or Damascus battern. The cost of either of these operations is more then the average low grade L.C. Smith is worth.
Before you agonize too much about Twist or Damascus barrels you need to get a stack of back issues of The Double Gun Journal, and read Sherman Bell's finding out for myself series on what it took to actually blow up some of these old "unsafe" Twist and Damascus guns.
Up front let me say I don't shoot Twist or Damscus guns. My Grandfather, Father and Uncles shot all manner of Super-X and Federal Hi-Power type shells in Twist and Damascus guns their whole lives. My Grandfather got his 1890-vintage heavy PH-grade Parker Bros. Twist barrel 12-gauge in 1901. That was the primary gun on a farm in Minnesota where six boys, all hunters, were raised. After Grandpa died in 1954 it was used by my Uncle into the 1980s. Grandpa is holding it in the 1948 picture in The Double Gun Journal, Volume Eleven, Issue 3, page 187. The Damascus barrel Remington Model 1900 KED-Grade my Father is holding in that picture is the only Damascus barrel gun that ever had a problem in my family. A couple of my cousins used it for Geese when steel shot first came out and bulged the chokes and loosened the rib.
You are more likely to get the breechbolt of an old Marlin hammer pump gun in your eye then you are to blow up a sound Damascus or Twist barrel double.
|
|