The steel we commonly called Damascus now is only in is not Damascus. Current gun manufacturers such as Caspian Arms make slide assemblies and small parts such as triggers and safeties for Colt M1911 pistols from powdered Swedish steel resulting in a swirling two-toned effect these parts are often referred to as "Stainless Damascus". These barrels are proof marked and meant to be used with light pressure loads. Because of the resemblance to Damascus steel, higher-end barrels were made by Belgian and British gun makers. a 19th-century Wells Fargo double-barrel shotgun and a souvenir card from Ulysses S. 1891 Sauer & Sohn drilling combination gun consisting of a 16-gauge double-barreled shotgun and a 9.3 mm rifle.
These types of barrels earned a reputation for weakness and were never meant to be used with modern smokeless powder, or any kind of moderately powerful explosive. Pawn Stars is an American reality television series that premiered on History on July 19, 2009. This process was referred to as "laminating" or "Damascus" and these barrels were found on shotguns that sold for $12. Prior to the early 20th century, all shotgun barrels were forged by heating narrow strips of iron and steel and shaping them around a mandrel. The discovery of carbon nanotubes in the Damascus steel's composition supports this hypothesis, since the precipitation of carbon nanotubes likely resulted from a specific process that may be difficult to replicate should the production technique or raw materials used be significantly altered. The technique for controlled thermal cycling after the initial forging at a specific temperature could also have been lost, thereby preventing the final damask pattern in the steel from occurring. As well, the need for key trace impurities of tungsten or vanadium within the materials needed for production of the steel may be absent if this material was acquired from different production regions or smelted from ores lacking these key trace elements. Due to the distance of trade for this raw material, a sufficiently lengthy disruption of the trade routes could have ended the production of Damascus steel and eventually led to the loss of the technique. The raw material for producing the original Damascus steel is believed to be wootz imported from India. Several modern theories have ventured to explain this decline, including the breakdown of trade routes to supply the needed metals, the lack of trace impurities in the metals, the possible loss of knowledge on the crafting techniques through secrecy and lack of transmission, or a combination of all the above. Production of these patterned swords gradually declined, ceasing by around 1750, and the process was lost to metalsmiths.