Its sinuous beauty is the essence of the gunmaker’s art, although some regard it as an obsolete technology fit for nothing more than black-powder. Damascus steel barrels are widely misunderstood and quickly divide opinion. Today the highly skilled, traditional art of making quality damascus barrels has been all but lost. The few companies that still produce damascus guns (James Purdey & Sons is one) do so using an entirely different method. Not only that, but other than a passing visual resemblance, traditional damascus barrels were made using a different process to original damascus steel, famed for its sword-making attributes.
Damascus steel was the product of early armourers’ attempts to get two seemingly incongruous, desired properties into their sword blades: flexibility and resistance to fracture; and hardness and the ability to hold an edge. They did this by varying the carbon content of the metal during the process of turning base ore into steel. Our modern familiarity with consistent-quality steel as a cheap, widely employed material is a world away from the raw materials early sword makers beat into submission. The original damascus steel blades were the finished product of Wootz steel
