I am amazed by what a high percentage of the stores have neither bore gauge or wall thickness gauge. How do you buy a doublegun made in 1917 without knowing the wall thickness or at least the bore diameter? If it is English AND you have the proof charts AND you have a bore diameter guage you can at least tell if it is in proof. Lord knows on the American guns.
I'm more amazed that these stores and many, many who are selling SxS have no idea there are gauges to measure such things and the importance of the results.
Fortunately, for the most part, the vast majority of shotguns do not get honed out. Most shooters don't have the tools or knowledge to do it themselves, and most won't pay a professional to hone a common field grade shotgun. And those that are honed are not often honed out to a point that makes them dangerous to shoot with commonly used loads. The reason for that is that most barrel pitting is usually not as deep as it looks. And it becomes even less likely that a set of barrels will become deeply pitted and honed out multiple times over the life of an average shotgun. Another factor is that most American guns tend to have thicker barrel walls than a light English upland game gun, so any minor honing or polishing of the bores over time is less likely to make them dangerously thin. There are exceptions, and I'm certainly not suggesting that it isn't important to know barrel wall thickness when possible. It is good to know that a gun may have been honed thin before you spend thousands of dollars on a purchase. However, the huge number of guns sold and subsequently used without wall or bore measuring is proof that it isn't as critical as some would have us believe.
Thin barrel walls do make them less resistant to dents. But we are all probably much more at risk from a rupture due to a bore obstruction from things like stuck base wads, ice or snow, mud, wasp nests, etc. The last shotgun blow-up Thread we saw here involved an L.C. Smith that had an obvious (after the fact) defect in the steel of the chamber, in a place that would have been impossible to detect by any sort of measuring. The presence of a single large inclusion in the steel between the chambers demonstrated that metallurgical analysis of any other part of that barrel would have likely shown that it was perfectly safe to shoot. That gun was probably used for decades without incident until a load was fired that produced pressure sufficient to cause the weak point at the chamber inclusion defect to rupture. I suppose that gun may have failed if it had been tested by a Proof House. Or perhaps the shell fired produced even more pressure than a Proof Load. It sure caused a lot of hand wringing and stressful conjecture for some. We hear a lot more preaching about the importance of checking wall thickness than simply frequently checking for any bore obstructions, which is much more easily done with a quick visual inspection on a break open double versus pumps or autoloaders. Several years ago, I saw a groundhog raiding my garden, and quickly grabbed a break open 20 gauge single shot I leave out in my garage for such occasions. I loaded a shell and poked the gun around the corner of the building, but something told me to stop as I was about to pull the trigger. I withdrew and unloaded, and was somewhat surprised to find that the bore was plugged solid with a pretty substantial mud dauber wasp nest. I'm pretty sure firing that gun would have turned out badly. I now stick a piece of bright green painters masking tape over the muzzle of my garage gun to keep the critters out.
