Metals Used in Firearms - XIII

In our last post, we saw how wrought iron could be converted into steel, by adding carbon to wrought iron in a closed furnace, in a controlled manner. Recall that, in our previous post, we mentioned that the problem with this method was that the distribution of carbon throughout the steel bar was non-uniform, resulting in some parts of the bar being harder than other parts. As we saw in the previous post, one way to handle this was to shear the blister steel bars into smaller pieces, stack the pieces on to a pile, re-heat the pile and then weld them together, so that the carbon content would be more evenly distributed. For better product, the process would be repeated multiple times. However, all this increased the cost of the steel and it did not necessarily result in even distribution of carbon in the steel either.

By the early part of the 1700s, steel was being used to make some parts of firearms (e.g.) lock springs, frizzens etc., as well as the tools to make firearms. In Europe, England and Germany were two major sources of steel during this period. The next development in steel making was due to an English clock maker and the technology he developed was crucible steel. We will study the process in this post.

The process of making crucible steel is actually much older -- as early as 300 BC, there were several places in southern India making a type of crucible steel called "wootz steel". This steel was exported to the middle-east, where it was encountered by Europeans during the crusades and was labelled by them as "damascus steel". The source of iron ore for the Indian steel was an area in South India, where the iron ore came with small amounts of vanadium and other rare earths. As a result of these trace elements, wootz steel has carbon nanotubes in it, contributing to its superior ability to hold an edge. Unfortunately, by the 1700s, with the rise of British power in India, the secrets of its production died with the blacksmiths. However, we have several earlier descriptions of many travelers to India (Arabs, Persians, French, English, Scottish etc.) from which we know that they were definitely using a crucible process.

Over in England, Benjamin Huntsman was in the business of making clocks, tools and locks in Doncaster, in the early 1720s. Later on, he also practiced as a surgeon and an oculist. Like most people in the clock making trade, he bought most of his steel from German sources. However, he found that this steel was not always good enough for springs and pendulums for his clocks, where consistency in the steel is the key to accuracy. Therefore, he performed several experiments to try and find a more uniform steel production process. Since he needed a large amount of suitable fuel for his steel furnace, he moved his business from Doncaster to Sheffield in 1740, because of the better availability of coke and coal in Sheffield. He continued his experiments in secret in Sheffield for many years and gradually re-discovered the crucible steel process. Essentially, his process consists of melting the iron in a clay crucible, adding a precise amount of carbon. The carbon distributes evenly throughout the molten steel, resulting in a more consistent product. The molten steel is then poured out into a mold to harden. Since the steel is poured out into a mold, it is sometimes called "cast steel" as well. However, unlike cast iron, this steel is flexible enough that it can be heated and forged by a hammer as well, or even welded.

The process starts off by using a crucible made of clay, to which is added wrought iron bars and powdered charcoal. The amount of charcoal added to the crucible is calculated based on the amount of wrought iron. A flux consisting of ordinary glass pieces is also added to the crucible. The crucible lid is then sealed and it is heated in a furnace. Since the glass has a lower melting point than the iron, it melts first and forms a liquid in the bottom of the crucible. After a few hours, the iron starts to melt and absorbs some of the carbon from the powdered charcoal as it becomes a liquid. Since iron is denser than glass, the liquid iron sinks past the liquid glass to the bottom of the crucible. Any oxygen is released in the form of carbon monoxide gas, which bubbles out through the layer of liquid glass. In a few hours, the iron is fully melted into a liquid and absorbs enough carbon to transform to steel. The liquid steel is at the bottom of the crucible, with a layer of liquid glass above it. The liquid glass seals the steel and prevents any oxygen or excess charcoal carbon from being absorbed by the molten steel. At this point, a worker, called a "puller-out", (sometimes, it was two people) reaches down into the furnace and pulls out the crucible pot. The crucible pot can be left to cool until the metal turns solid, at which point, the glass layer is broken with a hammer and the steel ingot underneath is retrieved. Alternatively, immediately after pulling the crucible from the furnace, another worker, called a "teemer", can open the crucible lid and pour the liquid steel into a mold, with another worker using a tool to dam the glass slag floating in the crucible on top of the steel. The steel has to be poured into the mold quickly (in under two minutes or so) and then a lid is placed on the top of the mold, to limit the amount of oxygen combining with the cooling steel. In about five minutes, the steel becomes solid enough inside the mold. If the steel ingot is to be sold to someone else, then the mold is allowed to cool for several hours before being opened. However, if the foundry has its own forging shop, then the mold is broken after 5 minutes and the still hot ingot is carried off to a hammer to be forged into the final shape, as it is still soft enough to be easily shaped (incidentally, this is the origin of the English saying, "strike while the iron is hot"). The crucible can be re-used a few times before it has to be disposed off, because it weakens due to the intense heat and erosion, every time it is used.

The "puller-out" and "teemer" had to be strong men, to lift and handle the crucible, since the weight of the steel alone in a single crucible was usually around 20 to 45 kg. (45 to 100 lbs.). The mold was typically about 50-100 cm. (about 20 to 40 inches) in length and square in cross section. It was made of two halves, held together by rings. The hole on top of the mold typically had a width of only 7.5 cm. (about 3 inches). The mold was deliberately kept narrow so that the molten steel cannot be exposed to much oxygen as it is poured into the mold. A good teemer could pour molten metal from the crucible through this narrow hole of the mold in under 2 minutes, without any splashing or spilling. Teemers were trained to do this by making them pour cold lead pellets into molds, until they could do it perfectly, before they were allowed to handle hot steel.

A teemer at work. Public domain image.

In the beginning, Huntsman remelted a mixture of blister steel and wrought iron, instead of just wrought iron, in his crucibles, and he kept improving the process over several years. He realized very early on, that his steel could be used for other purposes besides clock springs and tried to interest other local manufacturers of cutlery and tools to use his steels, but they were not interested, since his steel was harder than everyone else's steel. Therefore, he exported his steel to France, where it was very well received. Pretty soon, the Sheffield cutlery manufacturers began to lose market share to superior products from French manufacturers and as a result, they actually tried to obtain a government order to force Huntsman to stop exporting his steel! Due to their efforts, Huntsman even contemplated moving his factory elsewhere. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and the Sheffield manufacturers abandoned their attempts to sabotage his business and started buying from him instead and the demand for his steel went up tremendously. He established a larger steel factory in 1770 and the city of Sheffield started becoming famous for its steel. Within 100 years of his discovery, the city of Sheffield was producing about 40% of the steel produced in Europe!

Click on the image to enlarge.

Huntsman worked in secret and never patented his process, so other companies elsewhere also tried manufacturing crucible steel. However, they could not duplicate the Huntsman process immediately for a few reasons.

The first reason was the crucible -- it had to be able to withstand high temperatures and therefore, it needed to be made of a special type of fire-clay. By some lucky chance, the place where Huntsman went to dig his clay from, in the north western part of Sheffield town, happened to be one of the few places in England where this special type of clay existed. We now call this type of clay as "Stannington clay". When people in other parts of England, Europe and the United States tried to duplicate the process, their attempts failed because their clay pots could not withstand the intense heat of molten steel. It took other people a few decades to figure out that the type of clay used was crucial to the process.

The second reason was the flux that he used -- his secret was broken glass. The glass melts before the steel does and coats the surface of the molten steel ingot. As legend has it, this secret was finally discovered by one of his competitors, using industrial espionage tactics. The story goes that a person by the name of Samuel Walker had a rival foundry at Grenoside, on the northern part of Sheffield. One cold winter night, Walker disguised himself as a poor beggar and showed up outside Huntsman's factory, pretending to be ill and begged to be let inside for shelter and warmth. The workers took pity on him and led him to a corner of the factory floor to sleep in. Walker pretended to sleep, but what he was actually doing was carefully watching the whole process of making the steel. He observed the workers breaking green glass bottles and putting them in the crucibles. About three months later, Walker's factory in Grenoside was also making crucible steel. Whether the story about the disguised beggar is true or not, it is definitely true that Samuel Walker did exist and he did learn details of Hunstman's secret process somehow. Samuel Walker is recorded to have built his rival factory for making steel in 1750, although he did not expand his factory until 1771, indicating that his original furnace had only limited success. Perhaps he didn't figure out the other secrets, such as the clay, until many years later. Other people in Sheffield also started making cast steel, once they had figured out Huntsman's secrets and Sheffield became the first "Steel city" in the world.

The following three videos show some experiments made by a couple of geeks (one is Niels Provos, who is well known in computer security circles and now works in Google):

In the United States, steel was mainly imported from England during this period. The Remington company was one of the first to start offering crucible steel barrels for firearms in the late 1820s. In 1845, Samuel Remington appeared before the Ordnance Trial Board, to persuade them to use Remington steel barrels for military firearms.

By the time of the Civil War, both Remington and Colt were supplying crucible steel barrels, while most of the other manufacturers were still making wrought iron barrels only. Both companies stamped "cast steel" on their barrels, to show that they were of a superior quality. It must be noted though that wrought iron barrels were still cheaper than cast steel at this stage, so both companies also offered wrought iron barrels for sale as well. From a catalog dating from 1871, Remington is listed as offering both cast steel barrels and iron barrels of different grades. During this time, Remington's "cast steel barrels weighing 6 lbs. or less" are listed at a price of $5.00 each, whereas the price of their "iron barrels weighing 7 lbs. or less" are listed at $3.00 each.

The invention of the Bessemer steel process dropped the price of steel even more and was really responsible for many other firearm manufacturers to switch from wrought iron to steel. We will study that process in the next post.

Barrel Making: Fake Damascus Barrels

In our previous three posts, we saw beautiful examples of damascus barrels and studied the method of manufacture of these barrels. Due to the labor intensive nature of manufacture of these barrels, these were reserved for use with fine shotguns and revolvers. Thus, the presence of a damascus barrel on a gun was the sign of a high-quality and expensive product. However, some unscrupulous manufacturers soon found some ways to make inferior copies of these products, which they could then sell at a higher price as quality weapons.

One of the ways to do this was to take a barrel made of very cheap iron and then wind a very thin layer of superior damascus steel on the outside. An illustration of this process is shown below:

In the above, an inner tube is made of cheap iron. You can see the fibers of this cheaper iron tube, which run horizontally along the tube. Around this is wound a thin strip of damascus steel. You can see how the fibers of the damascus steel run along the length of the spiral. When the two are welded together, this has the appearance of a genuine damascus barrel and can only be told apart when pickling in acid, as the cheaper iron on the inside gets eaten away much faster than the surface layer. This practise was heavily used by some counterfeit manufacturers in Liege, Belgium.

Another way to imitate stub damascus is to use a cheaper iron. Real stub damascus steel is made using iron from old horse-shoe nails, which are melted along with steel from broken files and coach springs in a puddling furnace, which makes the blooms used to make the rods used for damascus steel. The cheaper technique was to use scrap cuttings of iron and put them in a charcoal furnace (instead of a puddling furnace) and then stain them in a particular way to resemble the watering pattern of damascus steel. The counterfeiters would stain the barrels very dark and then, a weak solution of muriatic acid would be applied with a sponge to those areas where the staining was darker, to make it more even. Then they would scald the barrel in hot water to stop the staining process. The result was very hard to tell apart from the real thing, except by subjecting the barrel to stress testing. This technique was common in England, as well as parts of Europe.

Similarly, barrels made of "threepenny skelp", "twopenny skelp" or "sham damn skelp" were made of very inferior materials and sold as damascus steel barrels. In most skelp barrels, the rods were not twisted together before manufacturing and hence the grain of the iron would be different from that of a damascus barrel. The solution to this was to paint on a cheap stain that resembled a fine English twist barrel, or put cheap engraving on the outside to resemble a damascus twist. One way to find out fakes was to remove the barrel from its wooden stock, because the forgers usually didn't bother to touch those parts which are hidden by the wood.

As you can see in the above, this fake damascus barrel gun hasn't aged very well due to its inferior materials. It is made of cheap iron and has an engraved twisted pattern on it to try and imitate the patterns of a low-end or single twist damascus barrel.

In our next example above, the barrels are also made of cheap iron, but the attempt is to fake the patterns of a three-stripe damascus or fine English damascus steel barrel. In this case, the pattern is applied by using a heavy roller on the outside surface of the barrel to engrave the pattern.

In the above two examples, the forger copied the pattern off a real damascus barrel and transferred it to the barrels using a painting technique called decalcomania, which was invented originally to copy designs onto pottery. The process of decalcomania is still with us today, we only call it by its shorter name, "decal."

In all these pictures, the reader might be struck by how badly worn out these imitations are, compared to the genuine damascus steel barrels of the previous few threads. This is because of the inferior quality and workmanship of the materials. Unfortunately when these were brand new, some of these were hard to tell apart from the real thing.

Barrel Making: Pattern Welded or Damascus Barrels - III

In the previous two posts, we looked into the history and development of damascus barrels throughout the world. Now we will look at some samples of such weapons. Before reading this post, it might be worthwhile to read through the previous post to understand how these barrels were manufactured.

Single Iron or Single Stripe Damascus

The first example we see above is a double barreled gun made of what is called "single iron stub damascus" which was used for the cheapest damascus barrels. In this type, a single twisted rod is flattened into a ribbon which is twisted around in a spiral form into one barrel. Two separate single barrels were made this way and welded together to make a double barreled gun. As you can see, the pattern has swirly lines, but is not as regular as some of the following examples. The raw materials used to make this rod came from old horse-shoe nails, broken files and coach springs.

Two Iron or Two Stripe Damascus

In the above example, we see a double barreled shotgun made with what is called a "two-iron damascus" type. In this type, two twisted rods, each one twisting in a different direction, are taken and rolled into a single ribbon, which is then wound in a spiral form into a single barrel. Two such single barrels were made and then welded together at the center to form the double barreled gun. Notice the rich patterning of each barrel in the above picture and compare it with the single-iron damascus type.

Three Iron Damascus or English Damascus

The above double barreled weapon is a three-iron damascus, otherwise known as an English damascus. This one uses three twisted rods which are combined into a single ribbon, which is then wound in a spiral form to make a barrel. Note the fineness and richness in patterning compared to the ones above. This type was used for the finest English sporting guns.

Laminated Steel and Silver Steel Damascus

In the above two images, we see fine examples of laminated steel damascus and silver-steel damascus. As with the three-iron damascus, these are made with three twisted rods, but the difference is the composition of the materials used to make the rods. These two use a higher percentage of steel and a better quality of iron to make the rods. Also, in laminated steel damascus, the iron and steel plates are piled in a different order before being combined, which gives the patterns a different shape than the other examples.

Six Stripe Damascus

As mentioned in our previous post, the English did not often make ribbons using more than three twisted rods, as they determined that the pattern was fine enough and that the pattern was not significantly improved by using more twisted rods. The Belgians on the other hand, used to manufacture some barrels using six twisted rods, each of which was twisted much more than the English manufacturers (They would use 18 turns per inch, whereas no English manufacturer would exceed 8 turns per inch, when twisting the rods). This gave it a beautiful finish, but it wasn't as strong as English barrels, because the excessive twisting actually weakened the barrels a bit. An example of a six-stripe Belgian made barrel is above.

Barrel Making: Pattern Welded or Damascus Barrels - II

In our last post, we looked at some of the history behind the so-called "Damascus barrels" and the history of manufacturing barrels of this type in India since the 1500s. In this post, we will investigate more about the damascus barrels and the state of art between the 1800s and 1900s in Western Europe. The technology behind this could produce barrels that look like the following two pictures:

(Click pictures to enlarge)

As we noted in our previous post, wootz steel (the steel used in the so-called "damascus blades") was NOT used to make damascus barrels very much. William Greener in his Gunnery in 1858: Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon and Sporting Arms writes that these barrels are rare and on examination of the available barrels made by wootz steel workers, most were actually were made of commonest iron with a very thin plate of wootz steel around them, indicating that the wootz steel ore was becoming very valuable, since the mine in India where the ore came from was running out. Instead of using wootz steel, the more common option was to use pattern welded steel and the reason that they were called damascus barrels is because the patterns on the pattern welded steel resembled that made from wootz steel. So the name "damascus" is a misnomer and when we say "damascus barrels", we really mean "pattern welded barrels". In pattern welding, two or more metals are used to make the barrel (usually iron and steel bars, or steel bars of varying carbon content).

To study how this was done, first we start with the invention of the Puddling Furnace to prepare iron and steel bars of required carbon content. Pig iron from quality iron ore is placed in a furnace, melted and cleaned of all impurities by puddling. The impurities are generally lighter than the molten iron and hence rise to the top and can be skimmed off. Any carbon generally burns off as carbon-dioxide and bubbles out of the molten iron. When most of the impurities have been skimmed off, the iron is allowed to cool and form large balls (called blooms) about 30-38 cm. in diameter and weighing about 35-40 kg. Each ball is then grabbed with a pair of tongs and put under a tilt hammer and manipulated to make it a square shaped block. This process is called shingling, and it condenses the iron atoms (increases its density) and makes additional impurities and brittle scale fly off during the hammering process. It is then passed between several rollers, which elongate the bar and thin out its cross-section. The rolling process also increases the ductility of the iron bar. This process ends up losing approximately 40% of the material that we started with, but produces high quality iron suitable for making gun barrels.

Scrap steel is also treated the same way as the iron bars, but if new steel bars are used instead, then those low in carbon content are chosen and used directly without going through the puddling process. Steel is not improved by the puddling process like iron is.

After these, the steel and iron bars are cut to equal lengths and arranged in layers in a definite pattern and then welded together. The amount of steel to iron ratio depends on the type of pattern welding desired. The type called English Damascus is about 60% steel and Silver Steel Damascus is about 75% steel. The way the bars are arranged in layers depends on the pattern desired in the end product. The picture below shows how to arrange the iron and steel layers before welding, in order to produce a star pattern at the end:

The dark parts are steel and the light parts are iron in the above figure. In other cases, instead of using bars that are square and rectangular in cross-section, they may use rhomboidal cross-section bars, or hexagonal cross section bars etc. The pattern that is produced on the barrel at the end depends on how the bars are arranged in the stack. The above image shows how they are arranged to produce a star pattern, but there are different ways to stack the bars to produce other pattern shapes as well, some of which were only known to old-time barrel makers and are now lost. The stack is arranged with more steel than iron to produce stronger barrels. The bars are then heated and welded together into a single bar and then, it is rolled between various sets of heavy rollers to produce a longer bar. For instance, we may have 25 bars of steel and iron each 60 cm. long, 5 cm. wide and 0.6 cm. thick (or 23.5 x 1.96 x 0.23 inches). After welding and rolling, we may have a long bar which is 1 cm. square (or 0.393 inches square) in cross-section. This long bar is then cut into 120-150 cm. (48-60 inches) lengths to make it more manageable.

These bars are then heated again to red-heat about 45-60 cm. (18-24 inches) at a time and one end is put into a fixed square hole or a vice grip and the other end is put into a movable square hole or tongs and then twisted. During the twisting process, the rod is watched very carefully to make sure it twists evenly. If one side twists more than the other, a skilled worker with a pair of tongs holds that side to prevent it from twisting and evens it out. The process of heating and twisting is repeated until the whole bar is twisted evenly and this produces a uniform pattern.

After the whole bar is twisted, it will have a circular cross-section, except for the two ends held by the square holes or vice grip/tongs which will still be square. The bar will also reduce in length due to twisting. For example, a 120 cm. (48 inches) long rod before twisting will become about 100 cm. (40 inches) long after twisting and have about 32 turns per every 10 cm. (4 inches) length. The two square ends of the rod are cut off and the rod may be used to manufacture a barrel.

Depending on the quality of the barrel desired, a single twisted rod may be used, or multiple rods may be used. For instance, in cheapest damascus barrels, only a single rod is used and this is heated and flattened into a ribbon. In better quality barrels, two, three, four, six or eight rods may be used. If multiple rods are used, they are chosen so that adjacent rods are twisted left or right. The rods are then combined together and welded together and rolled into a single long ribbon. Usually, very fine patterns are obtained by using three rods, so using more rods is generally considered overkill. The diagram below shows how to combine three rods into a single long ribbon.

Note how the rods are placed so that adjacent rods twist in opposite directions. The rods are flattened into a long ribbon of a given uniform thickness.

This flat ribbon, whether formed of a single rod, or of multiple rods, is then washed in acid. The steel parts being harder, resist the acid better and retain their white color. The softer iron reacts with the acid to form a darker brown or black color. The figure below shows a ribbon after it has been washed in acid:

This flat ribbon is then coiled around a mandrel in a spiral form. This is generally done at room temperatures, but if the thickness of the ribbon is too much, then it is heated to red heat before being twisted. The image below shows the ribbon being twisted in spiral form around a mandrel to form a cylindrical barrel:

The coil is then heated and the spirals welded together by hammering. Generally three people are involved in this operation -- a skilled foreman who holds and rotates the coil with one hand on a grooved anvil and also has a small hammer on the other hand to indicate where to strike. The other two workmen carry heavier hammers and strike at the points indicated by the foreman. This forms the tube of the barrel. The hammering process is continued until the barrel cools down enough that it turns black in color, which finishes the process. This hammering improves the density and tenacity of the barrel and the wear and tear of the barrel greatly depends on performing this process properly. If polygonal barrels (such as octagonal) are desired, then the same process may be performed by using an appropriately shaped anvil.

If longer gun barrels are needed, then two or three ribbons of different thicknesses may be used. The thickest ribbon is used to form the part of the barrel that forms the breech and the thinnest ribbon is used to form the part of the barrel that is the muzzle of the gun (since the pressure of gases at the muzzle is lower than at the breech, the barrel can be thinner at the muzzle end). The ribbons are combined end-to-end to form a long ribbon and then it is hammered into the spiral form as described in the last two paragraphs.

The resulting gun barrel has a pleasing patterned look about it, such as the beautiful example pictured below:

(Click picture to enlarge)

Notice the intricate patterning on the barrel. The evenness of the pattern has to do with the quality of welding the iron and steel bars together and how evenly the twisting of the rods was done. This is clearly the work of very skilled craftsmen.

In the previous post, we'd mentioned that pattern welded barrels were being made in India since the mid 1500s. The technology gradually went west, reaching Turkey around the 1600s and then Hungary (1634), Spain (1650), Austria (in 1683), Belgium (1700), France (1750s) and eventually reaching England in the late 1700s/early 1800s. W.W. Greener, in his book, The Gun and its Development, Second Edition, mentions that pattern welded gun barrels were made in England between 1800 and 1910 or so. Around that time, the main centers of pattern welded barrel production were Birmingham and London in England; La Chafontaine, Liege and Nessonvaux in Belgium; St. Etienne in France; Vienna in Austria; Suhl in Prussia (Germany) and Brescia in Northern Italy. He also mentions that some makers in the European continent, especially in Belgium, produced some of the most beautifully figured barrels, but they were not as strong as English barrels, because they were more concerned about the pattern than the strength, whereas English manufacturers tended to put more priority on strength of the barrel and put pretty figuration lower down in importance. Some Belgian manufacturers would use up to 32 plates of iron and steel to make a single rod which would be twisted into a very fine screw thread. Six of these twisted rods would be used to make a single ribbon and the pattern on these ribbons were very fine lines, no thicker than the point on a needle. His father, William Greener, in his treatise about the Gun, mentions that while such barrels were very beautiful to look at, too much twisting is bad for iron, since it rearranges the iron fibers which normally run parallel to each other and support each other. Nevertheless, the manufacture of Damascus barrels in Belgium was cheaper than in England and by the 1850s, some English manufacturers (especially in London) were importing some of their barrels from Belgium.

By 1910 or so, pattern welded barrels were not made in England any more and all English manufacturers imported their "damascus" barrels from reputable Belgian sources. The popularity of pattern welded barrels started to wane because of stronger steel barrels produced by other methods (such as Whitworth steel) and the fact that making fine pattern welded barrels was labor-intensive and needed high skill of craftsmanship. By the start of WW-I, when Germany invaded Belgium, production of pattern welded barrels had ceased completely.

Note that while pattern welding did produce stronger barrels in the 1700s and part of the 1800s, the rise of better steel production techniques made this technology somewhat obsolete. Despite popular culture which assumes that pattern welded Japanese samurai swords can cut through anything, the truth is that even a modern spring from a car suspension has better quality steel than an authentic pattern welded Japanese sword from the 1700s/1800s. The same holds true for gun-barrels as well and modern steels far exceed pattern welded steel in hardness, toughness and durability. The extra labor and specialized skills needed to make pattern welded steel barrels also made it less desirable compared to other techniques.

Production of pattern welded barrels was restarted in the 1960s in England and gradually other countries began to produce them in small quantities. They are still made by specialized makers for custom beautiful shotguns and pistols.

Barrel Making: Pattern Welded or Damascus Barrels

In our last post about early barrel making techniques in Europe, one of the techniques we studied was the making of the Canon a Ruban type barrels in France. On reading that article and viewing the picture of that barrel, the reader cannot but note the beautiful striping pattern on the barrel showing the grain of iron. Now we will study another method of manufacturing barrels, that originated not in Europe, but in India!

First we start with something called "Damascus Steel". What is popularly known in Europe as "Damascus Steel" was really a type of steel called wootz steel that originated in Southern India around 300 BC. The crusaders originally encountered swords made of this steel in Damascus, Syria and that's how it got its name. These steels were noted for their sharpness and toughness. One of the characteristics of swords made wootz steel is a banding pattern on the blade. Thus, any sword with the characteristic banding pattern was considered to be extremely high-quality.

While the wootz steel owed its qualities to certain impurities found in the ore from a specific mine in India, another way was found to reproduce the beautiful wavy patterns on a blade.

This technique was called "Pattern Welding" and was known to several cultures indeed. The Japanese used it to manufacture their swords since 1100 AD and the Vikings and Celts were using it around 600 AD, as were the ancient Germans. The idea was to use bars of two or more types of steel (0r iron and steel), one having less carbon content than the other and forge them together into a single bar, by heating, twisting and hammering as needed and then fold the bar onto itself and hammer forge it again and repeat the process of heating, twisting, folding and hammering multiple times, resulting in a bar with layers of steel of different types. Such a bar is called a pattern welded or laminated steel bar. The multiple repeated processes of twisting, folding and hammering causes the resulting steel to be purified of impurities and form a tougher steel. The resulting steel has wavy lines and patterns visible due to the difference in chemical composition between the different bars used. An example of steel produced with this method is shown below. Note the beautiful figurations on the blade, which is characteristic of pattern welded steel:

By 1570, pattern welding was used in the manufacture of gun-barrels in India, according to the Ain-i-Akbari written by Abul Fazl, the court historian of the Mughal emperor Akbar of India. From volume 1, we have the following chapter:

ON MATCHLOCKS
"These are in particular favour with His Majesty, who stands unrivalled in their manufacture, and as a marksman. Matchlocks are now made so strong, that they do not burst, though let off when filled to the top. Formerly they could not fill them to more than a quarter. Besides, they made them with the hammer and the anvil by flattening pieces of iron, and joining the flattened edges of both sides. Some left them, from foresight, on one edge open but numerous accidents were the result, especially in the former kind, His Majesty has invented an excellent method of construction. They flatten iron, and twist it round obliquely in form of a roll, so that the folds get longer at every twist then they join the folds, not edge to edge, but so as to allow them to lie one over the other, and heat them gradually in the fire. They also take cylindrical pieces of iron, and pierce them when hot with an iron pin. Three or four of such pieces make one gun or, in the case of smaller ones, two. Guns are often made of a length of two yards those of a smaller kind are one and a quarter yards long, and go by the name of bamdnak. The gunstocks are differently made. From the practical knowledge of His Majesty, guns are now made in such a manner that they can be fired off, without a match, by a slight movement of the cock."

Around the early 1600s, the technique had spread to the Ottoman Empire and later to Hungary and Spain by the 1650s. The defeat of the Turks in the Siege of Vienna in 1683 yielded thousands of captured pattern welded barrels for examination, and this event accelerated the manufacture of pattern welded barrels in Europe. By 1700, the Belgians were producing pattern welded barrels in Liege, and in the early 1800s, the technique was used in England to produce high quality sporting barrels.

Even though making steel through pattern welding is a vastly different process than producing wootz steel, they both have similar wavy watering patterns in the final product. However, since wootz steel was becoming rarer, due to the fact that the mine in India where the special ore was mined from was running out of ore, it wasn't used to make gun barrels very much. William Greener in his Gunnery in 1858: Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon and Sporting Arms writes that on examination of barrels made by wootz steel workers, most were actually were made of commonest iron with a very thin plate of wootz steel around them, indicating that the wootz steel ore was becoming very valuable. In fact, when anyone refers to "damascus barrels", they are almost certainly referring to barrels made by the pattern welding method, not barrels made out of wootz steel.

We will refer to some details about the technique of pattern welding used in India, written by Lord Egerton of Tatton, from his book Indian and Oriental Arms and Armor, published in 1896. This section is reproduced from an article from that book, found on damascus-barrels.com

It is said that the Persians distinguish by ten different names the varieties of watering. One of the most prized and rare is that which takes its name from the grains of yellow sand. There are, however, four main patterns generally recognized:

1. " Kirk narduban," meaning the forty steps or rungs of the ladder, in allusion to the transverse markings of fine grey or black watering. The idea is also expressed in an inscription on one of the blades, that the undulations of the steel resemble a net across running water.

2. " Qara khorasan," nearly black, with fine undulations proceeding like water either from the point to the hilt, or the reverse way.

3. Qara Taban, " brilliant black," with larger watering and more grey in tone.

4. Sham, or simple Damascus, including all other varieties. On the introduction of the use of firearms, the methods long and perhaps exclusively known to the Asiatics, of manufacturing sword-blades of peculiar excellence, was transferred with some modification to that of gun-barrels, and are still in use.

In addition to those, Sir J.I. Burnes mentions " Akbaree," in which the pattern ran like a skein of silk the whole length of the blade, and "Beguraee," where it waved like a watered silk.

In Persia, Kabul, the Punjab, and Hind the same general principles prevail, but the matchlocks of the last are held deservedly in the highest estimation.

In some parts of India the workmen prefer for the material of their barrels the iron of old sugar boilers, but they use in Kashmir the iron of Bajaur (in the country of the Yusufzai) as it comes from the smelting furnace, after receiving a few blows whilst hot, which condense it into a rude kind of pig, the weight of which varies from five to eight seers (10 to 16 Ibs.), and which sells
as high as 4d. a pound. The first process consists in cutting the pig when heated into narrow strips with a cold chisel, and in this operation the iron loses one-fourth of its gross weight. Each of these strips separately is brought to welding heat, and worked smartly under the hammers of two men on a block of limestone as an anvil. When the slag is expelled, each strip is drawn out by the hammer into a strap about 2 feet long and 11/5 inch broad, and 1/5th inch thick. One of these straps has its ends so brought together as to enable it to include about 20 other short straps cut up for the purpose, some being placed on their edge, and others wedged in between the lengths, sо as to form a compact mass. It is then put into the fire and lightly heated, receiving a few blows upon both faces as well as upon the edges.

It is next smeared over with a paste of clay and water, and when dried it is exposed first to a light welding heat, and after a slight hammering to a stronger heat, when it is vigorously and quickly beaten into four-sided bars about a foot long, and a finger's thickness. These are again heated, separated, and drawn out into square rods about J-inch broad on each face. These are then twisted from right to left, while the part which is to be twisted is heated to a red heat nearly verging upon white. This process is repeated by heating two or three inches at a time, and then cooling it with cold water, till the whole rod is converted into a fine screw, which is made as even as possible.

To make an Iran barrel six or eight rods are required. When eight are employed, four of them have the twist from right to left, and four from left to right. Every rod after having been slightly heated is lightly hammered on its two opposite sides equally, so that two sides have the threads beaten down, and the two others have the threads standing, and retaining their original roundness. Each rod is now made up of lengths of the same direction of twist, and is laid parallel to the other, so that rods of opposite twist are in alternate succession.

The steel having been formed into bars is now ready for manufacture into gun-barrels.

The extremities of the bars are welded together, and the baud or skelp is now ready for being formed into a hollow cylinder through being twisted in a spiral line upon itself, which is begun at the breech or thicker end, and continued to the muzzle. When the twisting is so far completed that the edges of all the twists stand even, and the cylinder is nearly equal, it is coated with a thin paste of clay and water, and is then ready for being welded.

A welding heat is first taken in the middle of the cylinder, and the edges of the twists are brought together by the breech being struck down upon the stone anvil perpendicularly for the purpose of jumping up the edges. The welding is constantly repeated, so that the twist, which was jumped up, is successively hammered when the heat is well on, till the barrel has been
welded up to the muzzle.

This process is then repeated, commencing from the middle to the breech, and afterwards from the middle to the muzzle, during which an iron rod is introduced at each end and used as a mandrel. A third heat nearly red is now taken at the whole surface of the barrel, which is then made regular and level by smartly hammering it. The barrel is then fixed horizontally through
a hole in an upright post and bored, after which its surface is filed, polished, and prepared for bringing out the damasked lines. " Jauhar " is brought out through biting the whole surface with " kasis," a sulphate of iron.

The barrel is completely freed from grease or oil by being well rubbed with dry ashes and a clean rag. About three drachms of sulphate of iron in powder is mixed with as much water as is sufficient to bring it to the consistence of thick paste which is smeared equally over the whole surface of the barrel, the muzzle and breech being at the same time carefully plugged. About two hours afterwards, when the metal has assumed a blackish colour, the coating is rubbed off, and the barrel cleaned as before. Barrels are called " pechdar" when plain or simply twisted, "jnulmrdar tvheu dunmsked" when damasked. For the latter the rods are disposed according to the kind of brilliant or damasked lines to be produced, called either from the country as "Iran" or Persian, or from the figure, as " pigeon's eye," " lover's knot," " chain".

The barrel is then smeared with a preparation composed of the same quantity of sulphate of iron and four ounces of water, and is hung up in the well. Every gunsmith has, in the floor of his shop, a well about two yards deep, the bottom of which is covered with a layer of fresh horse-dung half a yard thick. Suspended by a string from the cross stick at the mouth of the well, the barrel which has been covered with the mixture as before is taken out every morning and cleaned with dry ashes and cloth, and hung up for 24 hours with a coating of the solution. This process is continued for 20 days or a month till prominent lines are formed on the surface of the barrel, separated from each other more or less by other depressed lines or grooves; the former will be found to have the same direction as that of the thread of the screw in the twisted rods. The prominent lines when rubbed are bright and of a colour somewhat approaching silver, while the depressed lines are dark and form the pattern.

The " zanjir " or chain damask consists in the introduction of a band of prominent and brilliant lines disposed like the links of a chain between parallel plain lines of damask. The processes are the same as before described in cutting up the " pig," and in reducing the strips into straps, but the " pie " or " ghilaf " contains only eight lengths, which when welded is drawn out into straps 1/2 inch broad and 1/8 inch thick. One of these straps being heated is bent backwards and forwards upon itself in eight continued loops, each an inch long, and is then worked up into straps 1/3 inch broad, and 1/16 inch thick.

Three of this kind of strap are required in this pattern, one for the chain and two for the lines. The face of the iron anvil has a perpendicular hollow about one-quarter of an inch deep, and about one-third of an inch across. One end of the strap is laid while cold across this groove, and driven down into it by a small chisel and hammer, by which the strap receives a bend or angle. Its opposite face is then placed across the die near the acute elbow made by the chisel, and is in like manner wedged into it, after which the operation is reversed until the whole band is converted into a frill of loops. This frill is then heated, and the operator holding one end with a small pair of tongs brings two pairs of loops together leaving the ends open. This is continued till the frill is much reduced in length through the loops of the strap standing at right angles to its general direction. Different lengths of frill are welded together, so as to form a ribbon six spans long, placed in contact with two plain straps set on edge, and four rods, two on each side
twisting alternately, from left to right, and the reverse. The general band of these seven straps is then treated as that for the "Irani" damask.

The chain damask is in general preferred to all other varieties, excepting the silver twist. The Kashmiris still make blades for daggers in the same way, as one which was made for the author at Srinagar to fit an Indian jade handle is damasked, and Moorcroft relates that they made sword blades for him to order, though they did not usually manufacture them. It is said that "jauhar" is imitated in Hindustan by lines being traced in a coating of wax laid over the metal, and the barrel being exposed to the action of sulphate of iron.

We will now look at some pictures of barrels produced in India using such techniques. The first is an Indian matchlock with a herringbone pattern barrel:

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The next is an Indian matchlock from the late 1700s with a beautiful Crolle-twist wave pattern:

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The next is an 18th century Indian musket with a laminated steel barrel:

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Note that while the barrel making technique in India was quite advanced in the 1570s, they were still using ancient matchlock firing mechanisms by the time Lord Egerton wrote his book in the late 1800s. In the next post, we will look at the manufacture of pattern welded barrels in Europe.