Rob;
I may well be wrong, don't have many British guns to check. I was however of the opinion that most British & Continental guns had the so-called conical-parallel chokes & that the taper choke was primarilly an American thing. Greener pictures what he refers to as the "True Choke" as being conical-parallel & Burrard describes the choke in the same manner. He gives lengths of the cone as varying from about ¼" up to 1" with the parallel normally being no longer than 1¼". He further states that both the longest cones & parallels will be found on maximum degrees of choke, with those guns having only a very slight choke also having rather short cones & parallels.
At least one drawing for the L C Smith shows for Full Choke from a .732" bore a cone of 1 9/16" length to a .695" parallel having a length of 1".
Since most choke alterations consist of working only at the immediate muzzle it can be generally assumed a short cone with a long parallel having somewhat less than full choke constriction will indicate an "Aftermarket" choke alteration.
This is not meant to determine the desireabilty of having it done, but simply to state unless the gun is sent to a "Gunmaker" & original type tooling used to open the chokes to original specs then the alteration can generaly be detected by anyone having enough interest to take measurements. I think it most likely not many guns have been altered in the US to original specs. This might be more apt to occur in England.
Last edited by 2-piper; 10/02/08 04:42 PM.
