doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lengthening forcing cones....good or bad?

Here's a link to an independent test done on the matter:

http://www.jimeyster.com/testing/documents/Forcing%20Cone%20Test.pdf

"independent?"

take it for what you want, he works on his own.

In my opinion long cones work and reduce recoil and barrel pattern better. Bobby

Fellow Double Gun Fans: In reference to the above study, performed by Ken Eyster at Heritage Gunsmiths in Ohio, I think one can get the idea that changing the radius of the forcing cone may improve patterning (by 10 shot); however, one has to keep in mind this was a very, very small study, utilizing only one gun and one barrel. I am not a statitician, but I wonder if the 10 shot improvement would even lie outside of experimental error parameters. I personally knew Ken Eyster quite well (he is now deceased) and know his son Jim Eyster who has now taken over at Heritage Gunsmiths. Ken did good work most of the time and his son Jim seems quite competent as well. I personally had them back bore several of my competition guns and most of them turned out pretty good. A couple didn't. My point with all this is.....which I knew when I presented the initial question....I don't think we will ever really know if lengthening forcing cones harms or helps our guns until further, large scale, double blinded, without bias testing takes place.

I think it's important that we keep all this in perspective. It's a gun, belonging to the person wanting the cone lengthened, not someone else's grandmother.

I've posted my description of what my patterning results were on this site at least a couple times. It convinced me. I don't have quantitative data, so if you want that, you'll have to do your own testing. While I'm certainly no proponent of taking a pristine high value collectable or even low value rare high condition gun, and modifying it, I will modify my mostly bottom-feeding guns to suit me and sleep well at night.

If something developed a hundred years ago was as good as it could get, you'd be riding in a Wright Flyer when you bought an airline ticket and we'd still be pouring gravel in a large bore and lighting the saltpeter with a torch.

Thankfully, there's something new under the sun everyday.

One thing I can assure you of; "IF" I had an original Wright Flier I would not be modernizing it. I do have several Shotguns which are older than a Wright Flier & I prefer them Un-Modified as well. Its really immaterial to me whether lengthening the cone of one of my 100+ yr old Lefevers, even the lowly H grades, would improve its pattern or not.

Seems everybody wants to bore out the cones & bores on these old guns for "Better" patterns, then they turn around & open up those carefully bored original chokes because they pattern "Too Good"

That's about it in a nutshell, Miller. The same people who drill out the forcing cones to tighten the patterns are also drilling out the chokes to make it a quail gun. When I used the "crutch" word, I certainly wasn't referring to Mike Campbell. His drilled out guns are serious competition guns in the hands of someone who doesn't need a crutch.

"If something developed a hundred years ago was as good as it could get, you'd be riding in a Wright Flyer when you bought an airline ticket and we'd still be pouring gravel in a large bore and lighting the saltpeter with a torch.

Thankfully, there's something new under the sun everyday."

Totally false analogy. The simple fact is that the original rapid development of the shotgun pretty much maxed the concept and the following 100yrs merely did some minor tweeks.

In specific I would agree that the .410 has some great room for seeing improvement but who GAF? - I mean, a .410? That's like wanting my smoothbore .22 rimfire to make better patterns.

And nobody has taken a look at how much difference there is between a carefully cut and polished cone job and a stock 649th gun on this reamer production bbl. Which all comes down to me thinking that the general concept may be fine but the individual gun may simply not need its' cone cut. In considering all the results of the mutherfications that I have perpetrated or had perpetrated on gun barrels, there is nothing that would tempt me to "improve" any of the Perazzis that I currently care for. Goes for the M12's too for that matter.

And I still have that 12ga reamer in the toolbox.

And at $50 a whack for a 5min job I'd do'em every chance I got too.

And the more applicable comment about "new" is the one that Will Rogers made - "The only thing new is the history you don't know". Which seems to have bee written for shotgunners.

have a day
Dr.WtS

This thread has mostly referred to patterns. If and when I lengthen the cone of
my Manufrance Id�al it will be only because Mr. Bell concluded that there is a
reduction in pressure when shooting 70 mm shells in 65 mm chambers. (I actually
use 67mm CIP shells in it).

If you are a good shot I am sure you never worry about patterns.

JC