doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Opening Chokes

Ok Drew and John Roberts......took your advice and left the chokes alone. A very light hone to bores and the Sir Joseph Whitworth barrels now look brand new. Removed less than .001 inch. 30 yards the right barrel throws 92% of shot in a 30 in circle and at 35 yards the left throws 93% of shot in 30 in circle. A pheasant and dove gun for sure. After reading your posts I couldn't bring myself to ream out the chokes.....besides, I have other open choked guns. Thanks for your opinions!

Buzz,
Sounds like you'll be happier with yourself and the gun over the long run with that decision.

I always look for reasons to get another gun or at least shoot another one of my guns.

Good move brother

Richard Sibbes The Soul's Conflict With Itself 1635
Happy is he that in his way to heaven meeteth with a cheerful and skilful guide and fellow-traveller, that carrieth cordials with him against all faintings of spirit. It is a part of our wisdom to salvation to make choice of such a one as may further us in our way. An indifferency for any company shews a dead heart. Where the life of grace is, it is sensible of all advantages and disadvantages. How many have been refreshed by one short, apt, savoury speech, which hath begotten, as it were, new spirits in them.

If this is not appropriate here, my apologies
BUT, How do they open fixed chokes?? reamer?, hone it with stones?? HOW???

Cheers

6mm: they use reamers to take out a lot of choke, then to make perfectly round I believe they hone, when done with that, they polish by lapping with progressively finer grit sandpaper.....or at least this is how it was explained to me. Apparently reamers and drills are not perfectly round, but take on a more of a figure of 8 appearance, so the out of round is remedied with a hone ( in a lathe type apparatus). I'm no machinist, and if I'm wrong in this explanation, hopefully someone with more knowledge than me will pipe in. BTW a perfect place to ask this sort of question.

Expansion reamer, either with the driving shank or arbor "piloted" (bushed) in the bore and driven from the breech OR driven by a T-handle from the muzzle end by an operator who attempts to hold his reamer and his tongue just right. Latter method is said to work best with chokes which have a parallel-walled section at the muzzle following the tapered section. Presumably there are dedicated lathes and boring machines which assure the "precision" which sometimes allows POI to be displaced at least as much as would be possible for a blind man with a rattail file.

jack

buzz,

Good decision on the chokes in my opinion. If you feel you need more open chokes for special situations try the RST spreaders. They are appropriate pressure for vintage SxS guns & the limited amount of patterning I've done with them indicates more even shot distribution than some of the other spreader loads I've tried. For what it's worth RST's open the pattern somewhat less than the PolyWad spreaders do but don't have holes in the pattern with the limited testing I've done.

I wish I would have gone this route on several guns that I've opened the chokes on in the past but the RST spreaders were not available at that time.

luv dem spreader loads. buy a few different ones and head for the patterning board.

I had a similarly bad experience w/ Briley several years ago when I had them put screw in chokes in a nice 28 gauge Perazzi. The end of the barrels looked like someone had taken ahold of them with a pair of vice grips. When I called, I was assured that the damage was not done by them, that they had arrived in the shop that way (they were perfect when I sent them).

My preference in chokes for a gun with double triggers is very open (.005 to .008) on the right, full choke on the left. Being able to instantly choose is a real advantage, and I don't recall feeling at disadvantage for a tight choked second shot.

In case you reconsider, A real pro to open a choke is Ken Eversull, in Louisiana. He does it by honing alone, that which he did for me was perfect.

Ken Eversull is an excellent gunsmith and he has worked on my guns, including a single trigger Purdey which was not so excellent until Ken worked on it. There is no better gunsmith on things of this nature. For barrel work though, I would be tempted to go with someone who specializes in such matters, such as Jim Eyster at Heritage Gunsmiths. BTW, I will NEVER buy another English single trigger gun and I got rid of that one. Talk about problems!