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I'm still making knives, but I no longer take custom orders.

I built the jigs. I don’t know where you could buy anything like them. I’ve made tumblers on a milling machine, but it takes a lot of set-up time to do it. In thinking about the lock makers of years ago, it occurred to me that they likely would have made jigs to create lock parts. With jigs, you can quickly make identical parts. Time is money and they would have also appreciated the interchangeability of parts. Jigs would allow for efficiently turning out virtually identical locks. Using these jigs to make the tumbler was actually a lot quicker than doing it with a milling machine. I’ve never seen any jigs made by old lock-makers. These jigs I made were my own idea of how they could be done. I made the two plates for the tumbler jig reversable. By reversing the plates side-to side, I can make identical right-hand and left-hand tumblers. Would be perfect for a side-by-side weapon.

Thank you. It would be a really neat idea to produce the jig and sell for those diy fanatics out there that want to make things out of exotic metals. I would love to do something like this but I don't have the skills to do it by hand..I could use a jig though and it would be a lot of fun

@@thesilversphincter I can certainly see how it would be cool to be able to buy jigs to make lock parts. But a jig made part is a very specific piece and its shape and dimensions are set to fit in a specific size and type of lock. The parts made by my jigs are to fit a pistol size lock. To have a marketable product line, one would need to produce jigs designed to create parts for numerous types and sizes of locks. That’s beyond my interests.

You are about 200 years too late to argue the use of the word damascus. These barrels are indeed "pattern welded"; a descriptive term for the material, which was coined perhaps 50 years ago. But the nomenclature of "damascus" has been used for these barrels for centuries. Please educate yourself before you attempt to educate others.

Thank you!

sir please reply 🙏

Without knowing more about the metals you are using and seeing what you have made, it would be improper for me to offer an opinion about the safety of what you have built. But it sounds to me like a very risky thing to do. Only you can determine by testing, if your barrel is safe to use.

@@SteveCulverMS1 thanks for reply sir

Thank you!!

I have used 1084 and 15N20 for one gun barrel and 1084 and 1018 for another. That being said, modern steels are extremely difficult to weld into a spiral welded gun barrel. The old damascus barrels were made of wrought iron and very low carbon steel. This old mix of ferrous metals was much easier to use for barrel making.

Many old shotguns that were originally proofed for black powder were subsequently reproofed for nitro powder. A gun in sound condition is perfectly safe to shoot with proper pressure and shell length loads.

In his book, “The Gun and its Development”, W.W. Greener writes the following paragraph. “Eighteen pounds of prepared gun-iron are required to weld an ordinary pair of 12-gauge barrels, which, when finished, weigh, with the ribs, lumps, and loops, but little over 3 ½ pounds. After bearing in mind this fact, and considering the great expense and loss of expensive steel and iron attending the manufacture of the metal, and the cost of welding of best barrels, it will no longer be a matter of wonderment that best guns are expensive to produce.” I believe, because of what Greener writes in other sections of his book, that the “prepared gun-iron” he speaks of is the actual damascus material that will be forge welded into barrel tubes. This is supported by the sentence in this paragraph about the “loss of expensive steel and iron attending the manufacture of the metal.” The “metal” being the prepared damascus “gun-iron”. Heating ferrous materials to high temperatures, as necessary for forge welding and drawing, and then exposing them to ambient atmosphere will always cause a loss of material to oxidation (forge scale). The large gun manufacturers produced their damascus material in rolling mills. They would stack together huge arrangements of iron and steel, weighing around 200 pounds. The stacked metals would be heated in a furnace to forge welding temperature. Once at heat, the arrangement of metals would be forge welded by passing it through rollers. Subsequently, it would be drawn out into the rods needed to weld into gun barrels by further rolling. Using a furnace where the atmosphere could be controlled to minimize oxidation of the metals and the efficiency of rolling the material into bar stock would greatly minimize the loss of material to oxidation. I have nothing but my own experience to base my opinion on, but I would guess that perhaps 5 percent of the original metals would be lost during welding, drawing and possibly grinding clean the bars of damascus material. An estimate of about 10 pounds of metal to make a single 12-gauge barrel in a furnace/rolling mill process would be reasonable. My experience at doing similar work in a less efficient blacksmith shop setting raises the material loss to 10 percent, or a little more.

They were amazing artists!

My intention was to make a 6 inch barrel. Lost a portion of it to a bad forge weld. Extremely difficult to weld modern steels into a gun barrel! Guess I should have thought about filming to ball hitting something interesting. 🙂 Was just shooting at a paper target.

Well, yes and no. It is necessary with these twisted damascus patterns to stock remove a lot of material to develop the pattern. It's a lot of expensive material to end up on the floor, but the outcome of a beautiful damascus pattern makes it worth it.

Thanks Moss!

Sorry, no. My shop simply doesn't have the equipment necessary to make them.

agreed should be treated as inspiration to learn the prosses not used as a tutorial

@@Ivancreeper19 Correct! Not all of the process to make a damascus barrel is included in this video.

Thank you!!

Thank you Jason!

Not sure why you think that.....

I have a swedge block, but really didn't need it for this project. The coiled damascus was round, after winding it around a mandrel. Just kept it that way during forging.

There's quite a few folks still doing that today! Not so much on the damascus barrels............

Most English barrels were made in Belgium

​@@markcooper9063watch: canon damas de fabrication. Here on youtube. Early 1900s footage of Belgian men making damast barrels.

Haha! Thanks!

Just think how B.A. those old time guys were.

I couldn't pull that off in my little shop! :-)

@@SteveCulverMS1 you still one up on me. I couldn’t pull it off with the right setup! Lol

Thanks honda!

This video was filmed with a camera that was not HD. Reformatting for RUclips made the quality worse. There is another video on my channel that is in HD, showing my work on another gun barrel project. It is much better quality. It is titled "Damascus Steel Pistol Build". ruclips.net/video/AFrZulegvFs/видео.html

Thanks Ray. Actually, they had some pretty cool tools back then! And they worked smarter than most of us do today.

Or the older the blacksmith, the smaller the hammer!

Thanks for the appreciation!

Thank you!!

I'm doing great! Thanks for asking!!

Thanks Wayne! Yea, buddy! It's hard work!

That would have been lovely. Let me know when you do it.

@@SteveCulverMS1You're right. That would have been lovely and I was hoping to see you do it

Haha!! :-) Wish I was that good! And too, my shop just isn't equipped for the work. Sorry.

Haha! I don't know. It came included in my video editing software.

Thank you! The video was filmed and edited by an amateur; with a non HD camera.

Thank you!!

I'm going to say that you will not get decent results. The bore in a forged tube is an ugly thing. After forging a tube down smaller, you still have to drill it out to near final bore size and then ream it. That takes specialized tools and a lathe large enough for the length of the barrel, plus the length of the tooling. I wouldn't consider all that trouble to make a barrel out of "typical" steel. It's only worth it to me, if the barrel is made of damascus. New (and used) barrels are cheap and easy to find.

@@SteveCulverMS1 Now that i am reading my comment, i noticed that i haven't really made myself clear. What i initially wanted to say is that i do not have a means to drill out a solid steel bar down the middle because i do not have access to a suitable gun drill or long enough drill bits (which would not produce satisfactory results anyway) So to clarify, i am able to drill and ream out a forged barrel blank and i plan to make a pistol barrel at least 30 cm long. I also agree with you that forging a gun barrel out of any steel really isn't worth the effort, but i wanted to try and reduce a thick walled piece of pipe to a suitable diameter.

@@hardcase1659Machining a forged barrel tube is a complicated process. I have not been able to do exactly the same machining on any tube that I have done. As each forging is different, you continually have to figure out what you need to do next during the bore clean-up work. The forged bore is not perfectly round, it’s not straight and is not concentric with the outside of the tube, so the amount of material that is being cut away during drilling is uneven along the length of the bore. The varying amounts of material being bored out, tends to push the cutting tool sideways. If the tool is misdirected by the material and starts cutting off center with the outside of the tube near one end, it will be very off center if fed through to the other end of the tube. So, you must be constantly aware of how the tool is being directed. If the tool starts to cut off center, you must take note of it and resolve a way to correct the problem. Correcting the condition of the forged bore and the outside of the tube not being perfectly concentric with each other, is done by alternately drilling the bore and then turning the outside of the tube to be concentric with the bore. I use two different lathes for the boring and outside turning of the tube. (It can be done with one lathe, just takes a lot of tooling changes) After each bore drilling operation in one lathe, I place the tube in the other lathe, with the bore held between tapered centers. In this second lathe, I turn the ends of the tube concentric with the bore. The tube is then placed back in the first lathe for another drilling operation, being held by the newly turned ends in the lathe chuck and a steady rest. It is a back and forth operation. Drill the bore. Turn the ends. Drill the bore with a larger bit. Turn the ends. At least until you are confident that you can push a drill all the way through the bore and it is not misdirected by cutting uneven amounts of material. I step drill the bore out, using larger and larger bits. The first tool I use in the rough forged bore is a tapered bridge reamer. I push the tapered reamer into the bore from one end, to the middle of the tube. Then, turn the tube around in the lathe and push the tapered reamer in until it passes into the earlier drilled section. The bore is then drilled with a slightly larger core drill bit. Core drill bits are much stiffer then twist drill bits, so are not so likely to be misdirected. Once you have been able to push a core drill bit all the way through the bore, you can change to using twist drill bits. Final finishing to bore dimension is done with a chucking reamer. Off the shelf bridge reamers, core drill bits and chucking reamers are going to be too short to pass all the way through a barrel tube of any length. You’ll have to attach an extension to them, precisely enough that they function accurately. Aircraft twist drill bits may be long enough to drill out a pistol length tube. Your forged barrel tube will be covered, outside and inside the bore with forge scale. Forge scale is very hard and will quickly destroy the cutting edge on any cutting tool besides carbide. I soak barrel tube forgings in sodium bisulfate to etch away the forge scale. You can purchase sodium bisulfate where swimming pools chemicals are sold. It is used to lower the PH in pool water.

Thanks BB!

Making the damascus barrel is definitely the most challenging physically!

I used 1084 and 15N20 steels for this barrel.

There are tens of thousands of old damascus barreled shotguns still in service. They are used every day, by hunters and sport shooters around the world. Like any old gun, they should be checked before shooting by a competent gunsmith; someone who understands damascus gun barrels. Many old shotguns had chambers which were shorter than today's 2 3/4 inch shells. Each old gun must be checked to see what the chamber length is. Safe ammunition for these old guns is made by a couple companies. One company is RST Shells. You can learn a lot about damascus barreled shotguns on the damascus-knowledge.com web site. sites.google.com/a/damascusknowledge.com/www/home There is also a great gun forum, where you can find information and ask questions of very knowledgeable gun collectors. www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=cfrm&c=1

The problem started when nitro powders were introduced, and people didn't realise that only half the amount was needed as an equivalent charge. Black powder is slower burning.