doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Who named "Improved Cylinder" choke

By the way, Drew, Mr. Birdsong ordered his gun through Roger Van Gilder in Knoxville, Tennessee. Both Van Gilder and Birdsong were names of shooters in the Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Memphis areas. They are mentioned, although not often, in the la84foundation search function.

Drew, Burrard in volume 3 of," The modern Shotgun- The gun and cartridge," reviews improved cylinder and its relation to choke.In 1887 when the British rules of Proof changed, eliminating the "Not for Ball" mark,replacing same with the word, "Choke", the rule of proof was, "any barrel with a restriction at the muzzle must be impressed with the word choke".
Burrard defines improved cylinder as, "Any barrel with a muzzle diameter [choke] normally reduced by .003-.005" that results in a pattern density of 50% approx; using #5or6 shot [British] at 40 yards . This represents a 10% approx; improvement over a gun bored true cylinder.Expanding on this issues, Burrard states that some makers infact increase the degree of choke on improved cylinder barrels to .008 max; in order to achieve the desired pattern density.
In my opinion the term Improved cylinder was adopted by the british trade in 1887 so as to differentiate between the more common and better understood definitions of choke namely 1/4 ,1/2, 3/4, and full choke.

Chuck, if you've got a .410 that breaks skeet birds as reliably as either a 12 or 20, you really have something there!

Thank you Roy.
In keeping with the observations by Chuck and Mike, I have a 1906 Smith with right barrel choked .007 and left .030.

It was certainly somebody on the sales staff of one of the shotgun companies who came up with this nomenclature. As I read somewhere, "Improved Cylinder" would sell a lot better than if it were called "Degraded Modified".

Greener did not mention "Improved Cylinder" in the 1881
edition of The Gun and Its Development: With Notes on Shooting
http://books.google.com/books?id=LAsAAAAAQAAJ

It's all in the terminology. Light modified is a big thing these days. And it's said that Chevy's choice of Nova for one of its models did not help sales to native speakers of Spanish.

It's really simple.

.000 - Holey Moley - or, porous forus.
.005 - Skeet - which in Lower Slobovian means "missed again".
.010 - Improved Syllable, that syllable being obscene.
.015 - Lightly Mortified, as the bird sails off.
.020 - Mortified, or just enough choke to cause a near miss.
.025 - Improved Mortified, same as above but a far miss.
.030 - Way too Much - perfect for when the bird is twice as far as it was.
.040 - Extra Too Much - or, sky busters delight.

I don't recall the source (it will come to me after signing off)but I read somewhere that "Improved Cylinder" was the term used by English gunmakers to describe a boring technique. Apparently some makers, to maintain their position that choke boring was useless but to satisfy customers asking for closer shooting guns, used a method that constricted the bore only slightly and very gradually over a longer section, so as to be nearly indistinguishable from true cylinder in appearance. Thus the term "improved" cylinder. Eventually chokes became the general rule but the term stuck around to describe a choke of nominal constriction.

Indeed, I have an English 12b, the right barrel of which is not stamped "choke" but has a nearly continuous reduction in bore size beginning about 15" inches from the muzzle, to a final constriction of about 0.005

RC, if your gun has only .005 constriction, per the British rules of proof, it could have been marked choke--but only if the individual sending it to the proofhouse had so requested. .008 or more had to be marked choke; if it had at least .004 but not as much as .008, it could be marked choke by request.