Posted by SGT on February 8, 2008, 12:29 pm, in reply to "Re: Steel Barrels"
I'm often left scratching my head over the fact that my communication skills are so poor that I often seem to infer things that were certainly not my intent; therefore, and so that no one leaves this topic confused and misguided, please allow me to address the other issues raised. First of all, to my knowledge all Smith gun frames and foreirons (regardless of grade) were milled from the same steel alloy forgings regardless of grade; but frames and irons used on grades higher than Ideal (and Grade 1 on Pre-13 models) received additional milling to the top of their frames to form the Smith trademark "points" seen on mid and high-grade Smiths. From that point remaining frame/iron metal finishes were hand work, the amount of filing, reshaping, burnishing, polishing, etc determined by the grade of the gun, all of which meant varying amounts of extra dollars; but the very highest grades (DeLuxe, Premier, A-3, etc) were hand finished to the highest degree humanly possible, inside and out, in an effort to create as perfect a gun as possible. All this additional handi work; the finer wood, engraving, checkering, more expensive barrels, hand polishing, and attention to every detail is why the A-3 gun cost the customer 16/17 times more than a Grade 00 gun. As to barrel strength, I didn't think I had inferred that some Smith barrels were inferior as to bursting strain, as all barrels used on Smith guns; be they Twist, Damascus, or any type of steel were factory proofed and tested to withstand the heaviest loads used in that era, with an extra strength "idiot factor" incorporated into each type in an effrt to compensate as much as possible for the boneheaded hand-loader double charging his shells. That said, there were documented differences in the strength ratings of the various barrel steels used prior to WWI (again, check out the Greener book); and the real cheap barrels tubes used in the $7 Belgium hardware store imports were notorious for bursting with nitro shells (and the primary reason folks are afraid of Damascus today). But the quality gun makers like Hunter never used these cheap tubes; always using the finest barrel material available for a given grade. If one studies Greener's book he will find that the bursting strain of all high quality Twist and Damascus tubes was very high, and thousands of PSI higher than the 18,000 PSI modern proof loads considered the industry standard for domestic proofing today. It would be great for Hunter's proofing data to have survived so that we could have a more indepth knowledge/understanding today as regards the relative strength of the different barrel tubes Hunter used; but since we don't, and since we want to preserve all surviving vintage guns we presently recommend using only low-pressue ammo considered safe for such guns. As to handling/shooting qualities, my personal opinion is that the highest grade Smith guns did handle a little better than the lower grades; as my personal experience reveals that such guns were better balanced. As to shooting qualities, I have no test data to bear out this next theory; but I also suspect the highest grades guns consistently patterned better than the lower grades. I base this theory on the fact that the highest grade barrels received hours and hours of hand polishing to bores and chokes to regulate patterns to consistently perform to customer request (such work could not be affored to the lower grades). In our modern world, there may not be a discernable pattern difference between lower and higher grades with the same degree of choke due to the fact that shot columns are now protected with plastic sleeves; but such technology was not avaialable during the Smith gun era, nor were the other shell components nearly as uniform and reliable as they are today. I can tell you from experience that it is much more difficult to obtain a 70% full-choke 40 yard pattern in a 30" circle without shot column protection than it is with that shot column inside a plastic sleeve. This truth is borne out by the fact that many vintage guns are now considered "over-choked" for today's shells. The result is that many of us present day shooters have elected to have the meticulously honed original chokes in our old guns "relieved" so we can actually hit something with the darned thing!