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Antique Benz trivia help

Greets,

I have a small bet with a friend I need help resolving. I swear I read somewhere about an antique (1920-ish?) Benz restoration that involved a laminated, or stacked engine block. Apparently the engine block was made in layers - I guess of plate steel, although it may have been thicker castings. Cylinder liners, were of course, used.

I have no idea how the layers were bonded, which is why my friend says I'm a few french-fries short of a happy meal, and that any block made that way would spew oil and coolant from each layer.

I contend if it's possible to make a shotgun barrel out of wire, that a stacked block is not only out of the question, but was actually made by MB.

Any historians out there?

Conrad

Reply to
Conrad
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(snip)

I think you are referring to what is called a Damascas barrel. They were made by winding twisted iron strips around a mandrel and hammering in a forge to weld them together (mostly - there were oxide voids.) These barrels look wonderful with surface patterns often of great beauty, but they were not very strong compared to fluid steel construction. Received wisdom, and common sense, limits them to black powder shells, not modern smokeless loads.

Not me for cars!

Cheers, Roger

1998 E320 driver, skeet shooter and shotgun collector.
Reply to
Engineer

Yep - and not very strong meant a faceful of metal fragments if they were overloaded. I've actually handled one that had a bulged barrel from overloading, which I gather was unusual - I was told that they either held together OK if you used sensible amounts of powder, or blew apart if you didn't - whoever shot that last load in the bulged one was lucky. But they were beautiful, and much lighter than the other pieces of the era. Just incredibly labor- intensive - and a little delicate.

Conrad

Reply to
Conrad

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