Wow, I am blown away by the knowledge on this forum. Thank you all for your input. This is fantastic!
One more observation - it appears someone got a little carried away opening up the chokes on this old gun. The barrels are very thin at the end. This brings me to a question - I can easily measure the outside diameter of the barrels but what tool do you recommend I can purchase for measuring the inside diameter of these barrels. I want to have a tool for doing this in the future.
Thank you!
Brian
A bore gauge and wall thickness gauge. Two different tools. They're gauges for sale in the for sale section of the site. Galazans offers a well made wall thickness gauge, as does brownells (quite a bit cheaper but it'll get you close). Bore gauges are easier to come by, there was discussion on here a while ago about a guy who makes them, he's on another website. Gary Bulley maybe?? The skeets gauges are good, horsford is a beautiful tool that is amazingly accurate. An industrial tool store like mscdirect.com has all kinds of gauges that can be adapted for gun uses. Good luck.
And just a quick FYI......many old hammer guns were cylinder choked and under bored (13/1). Many of these old hammer guns had very thin muzzles, a by product of the maker striking the barrels for balance. The muzzles on some guns may look like razor blades... This is not indicative of someone hoggin out the metal to make a cylinder choke an extra extra cylinder choke. Some gunsmiths were known to jug choke these old guns to give them choke. I'd be more worried about that. Bore gauge will tell the truth. FWIW.... I've shot sharptails at 40 yards with a old hammergun with 13 bore and cylinder choke. It works.
