True history of Tula Choke https://wp.me/p461yQ-35e

I would love to read the article but my Russian is limited to "Nyet"

I have a skeet gun that is suppose to have Tula chokes on it but from the pictures I might have something else.

1960's BRNO



It is a 12ga, I use 11/16 oz of 9's, piston skeet wad in a 2 1/2" Fiocchi hull with 16gr of 700x in it and it shoots beautiful patterns.

It is a pretty handy rig as it has a set combo barrels with it in 12ga/22 Sav. Highpower(5.6x52R) that are extremely accurate, shooting sub-MOA to 300 yards. I travel with this in the RV a lot as I can hunt just about anything with it and it does a pretty good job even on a sporting clays course with an ounce of 8"s

Oskar, just copy the web address in the first post and paste it into Google Translate. Then click on the English translated website to the right.

Thank you very much, I didn't know you could do that. The translation does take a little imagination though, but it was much easier than Russian.

My Tula choked gun is a Rottweil Olympia 72 Skeet gun

Mike

Interesting article. I was taught Skeet by a fellow who competed against them in Egypt in 1962 I think. He was shooting a Winchester Model 12 with a Cutts Compensator. I knew the Tula choke was inspired by the Cutts Compensator but did not realize how intricate it was designed. All this before computers. Those fellows either thought in three dimensional ways or did a lot of trial and error. The Tula choke did produce a nice pattern. At one point the Soviets had shells custom loaded for every station that were optimized for the best pattern at every target distance. This was quickly deemed to ge an unfair advantage I was told and not allowed. But having a spreader loaf for station seven and eight would make a lot of sense.

There was a time when some boxes of paper skeet loads contained some spreader loads. I believe that was all prior to WW2, but I'm no expert on the matter.

And to the station specific loads developed by the Russians for International/Olympic skeet before being banned, some were loaded with cubic aluminum shot! Some serious and innovative thinking outside the box, that and it was well within the former rules.

It might have said so in the article, but the idea behind the Cutts was an expansion chamber behind the choke. The gases were supposed to be bled off through the ports, taking pressure off the filler wad and thus slowing it down so as to prevent it from moving through and blowing the pattern; due to its considerable mass, the shot charge was unaffected. That's the theory.


I have always suspected that Winchester's skeet chokes (WS-1 & -2)with their belled mouths were an inexpensive way to emulate what Cutts was doing.

I first heard of the TULA choke from a Gun Digest article in the 1968-1970 or so period after the Russians really kicked it up a notch in skeet. The form of course is similar to jug choking which was used all the way back in the transitional period of percussion to breech loader to tighten groups.

Not wanting to digress but the referenced link above I found of interest due to the discussion of the original Cutts patent in the 1920's being originally geared toward rifle accuracy. It turns out the the current generation of .22 benchrest rifles use similar stabilizers almost exclusively. Their general use traces back to Bill Calfee who's work was central in a lot of regards to the movement toward the modern .22 benchrest rifle. Bill was an innovater and skilled machinist who worked magic in a very simple shop. He unquestionable built the best rifles of his generation, but was secretive about his methods and back engineered theory for his work based on non-technical reasoning. In the case of his stabilizers, theories have raged for years as to the method of stabilization. He contended that his devices worked by fixing the muzzle so that it stopped all vibration and movement at the exit. This is patently impossible with any vibrational analysis of the barrel. Practicing scientists have shown through vibrational analysis and fluid dynamics studies of the exiting gas column in the stabilizer that the devices improve accuracy by adjustment to compensate for shot to shot variation in velocity correcting POI (which is a weight effect) and to the cancelling of longitudinal gas pulses which disrupts the projectile flight (a gas tube effect). Many people and companies have claimed primacy in the development of such devices, going back to the 60's. Thousands of pages arguing either for a weight based of fluid flow based theory (most without any understanding of the scientific principles involved). In reading the original Cutts work, it seems to discuss exactly a modern muzzle tube. I suspect it has been completely overlooked by benchrest shooters due totheCuttsbeing so intimately linked to shotgun devices.