More than six years here and I don't know what to say to the 'smith!
Don't feel bad King - until the gun has been miked, there is no way you COULD know what to say to a 'smith.
Unless you acquired a gun from its
original owner, whom you trust when he/she says the bbls have
never been messed w/, you can't be 100% sure that the chokes marked on a gun are accurate. This is true whether the gun is 6 months or 75 years old.
Show me dealer who doesn't own a mike and I'll show you a dealer who has to say 'I don't know' when asked about chokes on a used gun - or risk being dead wrong.
The brass end of bbl inserts, reputed to indicate chokes, are a wonderful idea IF bore diameters never varied more than a thousandth of an inch. That's not the case, however, so such devices are really useless except as paper weights.
Thus (pay attention
!) you have to mike the bbls.
Some will say you can count pellets in circles on boards @ varying distances - and you can - but in the end, gunsmiths measure and adjust bbls based on thousandths of an inch of constriction. When you know those #s for your gun you'll know exactly what to say (or not) to a gunsmith.
FYI - there are lots of gunsmiths capable of doing quality choke work. I ship my Francotte bbls to Briley in Houston and I've never been disappointed w/ their work.
If you don't have access to a mike w/i driving distance, you could ship your bbls to such a gunsmith to mike them and report the #s to you. Then you could decide if you want to adjust them or not.
http://www.hallowellco.com/choke_chart.htmMight be of help, too.
