Larry, My original unaltered 28-ga. Repro chokes, carefully miked by a professional using a professional bore gauge is as follows:
Q1/Q2 = .004/.008
IC/M = .006/.016
M/F = .014/.034
We all know that actual constriction doesn't tell the whole story, you have to actually do some empirical pattern testing with various loads to determine what kind of pattterns your particular gun shoots, right? In your post above you never admitted that you actually shot your M/F choked barrels to determine effectiveness. It would also seem that either:
a) The chokes on your guns were mismarked.
b) You used inferior equipment to measure the chokes.
-or-
c) Operator error in measuring the chokes.
...and since you weren't able to even get the gauge into the barrels to measure them, it leads us to come to only one conclusion.
Darn WS . . . I've seen "professionals" using the same Skeets gauge I use, and I've seen some use other gauges. I've checked the readings on mine against the readings they got on theirs, and I've never come up with more variation than about .001/.002--and that's plenty close for government work. Using a bore and choke gauge ain't rocket science. If you zero the gauge correctly to start--and I always zero mine before using it--it's about as difficult as walking and chewing bubblegum simultaneously.
The fact that your chokes did not read exactly what mine did (please note that one other poster came within .001 of my readings) is neither here nor there. No guarantee they will be the same on every gun of the same model and gauge. That's why it's a good idea to use a bore and choke gauge! Same deal with stock dimensions. Most Repros have little or no cast, but I've run across a few that have a fair amount. And are you suggesting that a 28ga ought to have even .034 constriction for full choke? If you do, that's interesting . . . because I have a set of Briley thinwalls for a 12ga, and the full choke tube only has .030 constriction. It'd seem you disagree with Briley there.
And you can only draw one of two conclusions when a bore and choke gauge won't go into the muzzle: either the gun is severely underbored, or else it has a whole bunch of choke. And since the Repro 28's I've measured have all been slightly overbored--in the .555 range vs the standard .550--that pretty much leaves a whole bunch of choke as the only possibility.
