Red wrote:

Try to clean it up a bit, acid, naval jelly, whatever. Look to see if
there's a damascus pattern. Some very old shotgun barrels were made by
twisting a ribbon of steel around a mandrel and welding it together to
form a tube. OK for low pressure black powder, but a high pressure
smokeless load could rupture the barrel.


Huh, it does kind of look as if the ribbon has "unwound", the way it's
twisted like that. Each barrel is unwinding in the opposite direction.
Imagine that when it blew, the muzzle end went north and the breech
end south, leaving the guy with a part in each hand, going like a
pinwheel.

I'll put it in the electrolytic bath; don't know why I didn't think of
it. But it's pretty far gone, as far as pitting.

I agree with Roy that it may be the result of a plugged barrel. Did you
find any teeth or bits of skull in the vicinty? 8*)


I should have looked around for other parts (shotgun parts, not body
parts). But I was too excited with the great find. As a kid, this was
about tops as far as cool found objects go.

--
Drew