I, personally, experience a Brit style dovetail braze joint failure on a 1921 vintage Hellis Premier SLE. The failure was clearly due to an original cold braze joint; there was less than a dime size contact patch in the original braze, yet the gun had been shot considerably. Rather than an inditement of dovetailed barrels, this convinced me that properly brazed dovetails have little likelyhood of ever failing. Frankly, I'm not at all sure but what choppers were cheaper to make than dovetails, once the supply of dovetails and dovetail making barrel makers sorta dried up. The dovetail lump is one more piece and a bunch of fitted area.

Last edited by Rocketman; 01/04/12 02:54 PM.