doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lengthen Forcing Cones - $75.00 per hole

Spoken like a true Troglodyte.

Then again, what should I expect from this congress of experts...

(BTW, you don't "grind" forcing cones... then again, maybe he DOES!))

I've never missed a target or a bird because I don't mess with my bores. I've never experienced recoil that couldn't be lessened by reducing the shot load by 1/8 of an ounce. An absolute waste of money in my opinion.

This is another of those things that the owner of the gun gets to decide.
Mike

It may be "just your opinion", but its very sound advice.

I have 3 Brownells Forcing cone reamers made by Trefeten & Brown, 12 ,16 & 20. I have used each one exactly once and that was many years ago. I used one to open the chambers on a pristine 16ga. Stevens and I regret it. The other two are gone.

I'll never take steel out of the breech end of a gun again.

Does that mean I am going to go to hell for installing Briley's in my favorite 12 ga specialty grade that I now hunt with more than ever (and I am never going to sell it)

Jerry

BTW Didn't alter the forcing cones!

I think dinking with the bores of an old gun is perfectly fine. It's no different than when I go to Starbucks and the 22 year old white boy behind the counter has installed those huge loops in his earlobes so he will spend the rest of his life looking like a Ubangi. Perfectly fine. I'd type more on things that are perfectly fine but I'm late to find my way to the tattoo parlor so I can get FTW inked across my forehead. I think I might grab my little Parker 28 ga. and drop it off at Briley's on the way.

Not totally true. Without even commenting on whether to or not to open chokes A person who knows their guns can generally tell. Few "Choke Doctors" bother to use an exact configuration of an original. If you find barrels for instance with open chokes having abnormally long parallels they have almost certainly been opened. If both chokes are open but one barrel, usually the left one, has a onger parallel than the other then that barrel started with mote choke than did the one with the shorter parallel. If it is a brand, such as Lefever, which was originally bored with "Taper" chokes & the choke ends with a parallel section, It Has Been Opened. Serious Collectors look at these things, Hunters not so much.
Also on chambers unless the cone has been cut to a long taper it can be extremely difficult to determine whether it is original length or not. Many companies would cut chamber lengths to order. My 16 gauge H grade Lefever for instance, built in the 1907-1915 era has 3" chambers with standard length cones. Definitely not considered your standard 16 ga chamber, But, were they ordered this way or have they been lengthened?????
Both barrels on this gun carry full chokes so not much question on them.

Let's face it: A lot of old American guns came with chokes that were pretty tight. Ammunition was less efficient then than it is now. I just bought a late Utica Sterlingworth 16. Already restocked, so someone already "violated" the poor old virgin. 2 3/4" chambers, so I don't need to worry about low pressure loads. And the recoil from 1 oz "promo" loads isn't bad.

But the chokes are M/F, which is likely the most common combination, by far, on vintage American doubles. I'm not going to shoot trap with the gun. I would like to shoot skeet with it. I hunt over pointing dogs for birds like woodcock, grouse, pheasants, prairie chickens, and sharptails. Any shot longer than 30 yards is long for me, and on woodcock in particular, any shot longer than 20 yards is unusually long. So why would I want to keep those tight chokes--which might have made sense to the guy who originally bought the gun but don't make sense to me--the way they are? That gun will see far more use if I open the chokes. So, my choices are to preserve an already modified gun in its current condition and not use it much, or modify it to fit my needs and use it a lot more. Logic, if nothing else, would seem to lean in favor of door #2.

Low pressure loads might be a good idea anyway, Larry, for a gun as old as that. I don't know if Sterlingworth's of that vintage came with 2 3/4" chambers, but, a low pressure 2 1/2" English CIP spec load would be easier on it.
I'm pretty sure I own the last gun Stan Baker ever worked on, he died while it was in transit back to me. It had odd forcing "steps" in the barrels, not a cone at all-I think the idea was your black powder loaded paper cartridge was supposed to open into the step, travel down the deliberately undersize 16 bore of the gun, and your fiber wad had a better chance of sealing up the load, so the guns extra full and extra full chokes would hopefully get some shot on target. I think that was the idea back in 1910 anyway, but, it left a lot to be desired when I was patterning it most of 100 years later.The maker, Frank Tobin, was once interviewed way back in the last century, and advised shooters to quit using such tight chokes, but, the buyer of this gun didn't get the memo, I guess. The gun now has proper forcing cones, a gorgerous proper size 16 gauge bore, IC and MOD chokes, and throws wonderful patterns, with either fiber wads or them new-fangled plastic thingys. The chambers are still the same length they left the factory at, 2 9/16ths, if memory serves. Loaded up with Eley VIP loads of 5,6 or 7, I have all I need for just about any bird I hunt.
Ammunition has changed. It is better, no matter what the luddites believe, and the internal barrel dimensions that gave good performance with state of the art ammunition, circa 1910, are different from those that give even better performance with today's ammunition.
Some people can grasp that. Others, can't. WIth that in mind, I suppose, it would be a complete waste of time to try to explain the difference between "grinding" and "reaming", when it come to the barrel of a shotgun.
Good luck with the Fox, Larry.

Best,
Ted