I've got two Cyl barrels and have owned others, both factory and one that was cut 3", and like them a lot. I'm not sure how much practical experience Ron Forsyth has had, but he writes as if it's a lot. He's got a few entries in a 1992 collection of articles from Handloader Magazine and in discussing Cylinder mentions that most of the factory versions actually had some measure of constriction. Otherwise they could not manage 40% patterns attributed to Cylinder at 40 yards, and specifically wrote "It is worth mentioning here that a genuine cylinder bore, with two parallel walls the entire length of the barrel, will generally shoot in the region of 30 percent;" . I'm not sure of the time frame he discussed but in the cases of Mcintosh and LB they are talking of pure .000 out the muzzle and that is what I've found in my barrels of Winchester manufacture. If you wiggle the gauge at exit, the barrel of my M97 can show .001" but I haven't been able to find that with the left barrel of my M21. I consider them straight enough and they work fine for their uses: gunning at AKC pointing dog hunt tests, the dove opener, rabbit hunting at the end of the season and bird hunting in general.
I patterned that cut barrel of .000" at 30 yards using reloads with 1oz of hard 7's and found it to be within 1% of the results I got with an IC barrel of .005" constriction. Most would call that constriction Skeet, and the patterns were 60/61%. I liked it then and like it now.
The Forsyth article was actually about 1/4 choke. He made the point that he was talking about 55% patterns, not what was marked on a barrel or how many .000" it had. I've got a Model 12 16ga with a barrel marked Mod, it measures .009" (half of what would be considered Mod) and has worked very well for me on pheasants and pigeons when shooting for retriever guys who want the birds dropped a ways off. I'm curious to see what it's patterning with the shells I use in it.
Enjoyed the article, Larry, noticed it did not register on the PDJ forum.
kgb
