Xausa,

Peter is absolutely right on this. The steel that Herr Glatz uses is manufactured by Damasteel in Sweden and it is a modern Damascus available both in stainless and Blue-able versions. Barrels from this steel for rifles have been made in Austria by Stefan Gobec and 1911 style pistols, slides and other components are offered by several US gunmakers including Shuey Custom and Terry Tussey. Companies including the now defunct Brno and the very active Flodman in Sweden offer guns with Damasteel made barrels. The Glatz rifle is unusual in being fully made of Damascus - I have not heard of the action on guns being made of Damascus in the past and would be happy to be corrected if, indeed, any have been made.

I have been in touch with Per Billgren who owns the Damasteel company for some years now and I have all of his brochures with his permission to post them on the internet. I shall locate and post them here.

Incidentally, the experiment that Peter talks about in testing original Damascus barrels for strength was also performed by the Double Gun Journal some time ago and they came to the same conclusions that the Danish experimenters did. While Per Billgren's barrels are extremely strong, modern steels, even the old ones, if properly made, were more than a match for fluid steel barrels according to the DGJ article.

Good hunting!