Thank you so much for this find! Yup no gloves because your hands get abit tougher but mostly because iron and steel are relatively poor conductors of heat. One small aspect not shown is a dip in the tub to cool the section being held.

I thought the drawings of Damascus barrel making were not possible - they often show an "expanded view" of the process with the finished tube on one end of the mandrel then after a few turns of welded billets it fans out into individual billets. There was no way that could happen...JP

I understand that Damascus Barrels are still available, but obviously not cheap given the amount of labour involved, most, if not all, are made in Europe.
Harry

I question the lack of fluxing as well. At several points, the barrel was rubbed on a block of something by the anvil. Could that have been flux of some sort?

.22-5-40 wrote on Jun 30^th, 2015 at 11:34pm:

Know what you mean.
Took an ornamental ironworking class (a fancy name for blacksmithing) one semester. 
We just used 20 Mule Team borax straight out of the box (no sand or anything else added to the borax) as the flux for all fire-welding lap joints.
You wear your leather gear and face shield, because as you said, the flux and slag impurities fly out of the joint at high speed and pressure with a noise like a gun shot.
The instructors always said that when it sounded like an active indoor shooting range, then they knew the students were getting good full-contact welds.
It was a great class, and impressed upon you the plastic nature possessed by iron and steel.