doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com A Darne look alike question

My R10 has had the hell backbored out of it for some reason. I took it on trade from Steve Bodio that way when he bought his Darne slug gun. When I was in St. Etienne, having it restocked to fit me (lefthanded) they slugged the bore and discovered how much had been removed, and it was not a little number, by backboring standards. When I suggested re-proof, they all laughed at me.
I measured the wall thickness a few years after that incident, and discovered the joke-the wall thickness is between .060-.090" depending on where one measures. The 26 inch tubes had been thick as a brick to provide good balance. I don't pay a bunch of attention anymore to what loads I feed it.

Typically, the barrels are pretty heavy in a Darne, or, a clone.
Best,
Ted

Of course the muzzle is probably the least important part when you're considering wall thickness, but for whatever reason, nearly all French guns seem to have a lot of meat up at the muzzle end--and I think in the barrels in general--in comparison to Brit guns. Yet a lot of them are also quite light. And the good thing about meat in the muzzle on French guns is that many of them have pretty tight chokes; thus, there's plenty of steel you can remove if you wish to open them up some.