doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Why do people 'butcher' barrels....?

Bill, I think its a generational thing. Young shooters are inundated with all this stuff claimed to be necessary to improve shot-gunning. I shoot with a young family who carry about 12 choke tubes. Each target presentation is studied and a discussion held to determine if loose mod. + is needed or is ++ needed, etc. Anyone of us old geezers who have been around a patterning board at all know what a bunch of baloney all this is. Still, they insist it is important to their shooting. I have guns for 20-30 yard shots and others for 40-50 yard shots (that I usually miss anyway.) Too many fellows listening to the gimmick sellers and not enough time behind the gun. As you said, one has to learn to shoot before becoming a good shot. There is some irony in that many of today's shooters scorn the Cutts and Polys that, as you and I know, really give a variety of choke. Lou Smith and Col. Cutts tried long and hard to get the concept into double guns. What if they had succeed?? All this JMHO. Very sad to hear of the damaged NID 5E Trap . Not a lot of those guns around.

Chuck...
Super nice Fox, great job....I agree with your comments....luckily, I've been fortunate enough in the last 50 years or so of buying guns, to never have bought one that had been 'modified' in any way...no butt pads, barrel mods, extra holes, cutts or poly's etc....if it had any modifications, I always looked elsewhere.....

I also agree with Walter about the generational thing.....

Here's a Sterlingworth with 99-100% FACTORY original colors and 99-100% FACTORY original blue made in 1929 - Philadelphia gun, I only refinished the wood......hard to find like this, but they are out there.....

I can go either way in this discussion. I collect Smiths, mostly pre-13 guns, and shoot them all (some better than others!). By and large Smiths were delivered to the wholesaler choked full and OMG, and none bore (no pun intended) choke markings. Unless one is fortunate enough to obtain the original paperwork on a special-ordered gun, chances are even the factory records won't indicate how the gun was choked when it left the factory.
Having said that, I have opened chokes on some in my collection for my own personal use, and don't regret it at all---and---whose to know but me! Another example--- an "A" grade 16 Fox that I own, selected as the consummate grouse gun with factory 26" #3 tubes came to me choked M/F is now choked M/IC---would anyone even question the way it's now choked?

Nothing sets my teeth on edge quite like the "I just bought this neat old ____ and I am going to send it off to Brileys and have thin walls put in it" post of a new vintage gun owner.

I have barrel chokes altered. Often.

Many of my vintage American SxS's left the factory in the early 1900's choked FULL & FULLER. Given tha ammo of the day, and their hunting style, that may have been appropriate.

I mostly hunt upland birds over pointing dogs. For that purpose, much more open chokes are desirable. I see no value in hunting bobwhite quail with a 12 gauge full choke shotgun.

I bought a few northern European doubles that were made post-WWII. They were all choked F & F. I was told (???) this is because they shoot birds on the ground and in trees. In any case, I had the right barrels opened to IC, and have been pleased with the results.

I also enjoy using my older SxS's to shoot sporting clays. F&F is a real handicap, as most local courses are laid out for IC & M.

Jerry Goldstein

I have never been able to afford any collector condition guns, in the first place, so what I do with MY GUNS is no-one else's d..n business. Life is too short to hunt with an ugly gun, ugly dog or a gun that doesn't suit my purposes. My gun safe is not a museum. What you or anyone else does with theirs is certainly none of MY d..n business, either. Lighten up on your HTT attitude. Even if someone could answer all your "why, why,whys" questions, what would you do with the information?

Previous owner opened up the chokes in my pre-war "twin-single" Super. Previous owner put Briley thinwalls in my mid-sixties Super. Previous owner had the cones run out in my 1911 Fox BE. Bill probably should jump all over me for buying all this butchered junk. I did have Mike Orlen raise a dent in a '28 SW, open the full barrel a bit, and lengthen the cones. He also honed an '89 Remmy hammergun ("decarbonized" steel) and a Lefever damascus FE for me. So I have sinned. BUT, how about the model of 1911 SW Co. pin gun with the full&fuller, and the Merkel 200e with constrictions in the high 40s, the project Manufrance Ideal which I'm currently "butchering" has 48 pts. in the left barrel. All got nice steep cones and the Ideal I think has 2.5" chambers. And I have a couple of Brum no names with that ic/full situation. I have asked everybody and their cousin for recs on fiber and card wad loads for these guns; I've got everything I can find on this from Precision Reloading and Ballistic Products (and it ain't much). Please (Bill) help me make these guns shoot. I don't want to stand way back and I don't want doughnut patterns. (Yes, I have shot skeet with every gun and choke I have including a Flues 4e SBT choked IM. Damned fine gun after the out of bounds stake and amazingly good to me on Xers also). Seriously, if anyone here has the answer to this .719-.721" bore Euro stuff with the very fine nozzles, I'd love to hear how you attacked the problem and your pattern results. If you've a pet load and can share, add your disclaimer and be sure I'll check it pretty close before I load it. I will have to say that I have had second thoughts about long cones in old guns. I'd like to optimize for these rigs as they are with the stuff they were designed to shoot.

jack

PA24, why in the world did you refinish the wood on your beautiful Sterlingworth?

If it's because "you could and you wanted to" answers your original question as to why someone would choose to "butcher" the metal on their own gun's barrels.

I'm with Jerry and Jim on this one. Most vintage American doubles, Ithacas being about the only exception, didn't even come with the chokes marked. And if they were full with the old fiber/cork wads, then they're REALLY full with modern plastic wads. Why not open them? And Americans have grown taller in the last century or so, which means that LOP on a vintage gun is often too short for today's shooters. Besides which, most of those vintage guns offered pads as an option--or at least that's what my 1940 Shooter's Bible tells me. So, especially if you use a "period" pad--with which the gun might have been ordered anyhow--why not?

If the gun's truly collectible and high grade, then you're well advised not to mess with it. But it's not much good to you if you're going to hunt with it, or shoot targets, and it doesn't fit or has chokes that are all wrong for the intended purpose.

Every time some "purist" sniffs about someone opening chokes, or even lenghtening forcing cones, I put him down as someone who seldom shoots, just puts the guns in his safe and takes them out to admire them. Using guns with too-tight chokes and short forcing cones, even short chambers, makes about as much sense as driving an A-model Ford on the interstate. These guns were made as hunting tools and I tailor mine to suit modern ammunition in the sport I choose. Only a tiny minority of collectible invesat ment-level guns should be left as they were originally built, in my opinion.