I find fowler's textual analysis convincing and Muderlak's not so convincing... jack
rabbit: What you need to do is re-read my post. I simply quoted an old book, and I said that the translation left it somewhat unclear as to whether the author's original Portuguese phraseology was that the the relief was
started two or three fingers behind the muzzle--"within"--thus resulting in some constriction at the muzzle, or starting at the muzzle going
to two or three inches "within." The author was not perfectly clear, and a simple two letter word ("to") would have done it. I expressed no opinion one way or the other; I just quoted the book, which is not as clear as one would wish, and observed the alternate possibilities.
Interestingly there is a cross-section of a barrel at p.366 of
The Perfect Gun (1718) that shows relief at the breech and muzzle ends and constriction at the mid point; a ball touches at the mid point but is loose at the ends. Yet this seems, in context, to be an example of a smooth-bore musket, not an example of boring a fowling piece for "hail-shot" (unless the pictured balls are just to illustrate the bore-diameter variations?).
W. W. Greener in
The Gun... has line cuts of various barrel cross-sections; three are "old style" being pre-"choke boring" (at p.441, 2nd ed. 1884), and example #2 shows relief at both ends and constricted in middle, exactly like the image in the 1718 book, the only difference being that Greener's barrels are for shotguns, not ball muskets.
Based on other old books, especially W. W. Greener's
The Gun... (I have the 1884 2nd ed. et seq), I may think the relief imperfectly referred to in
The Perfect Gun was from the muzzle inward, but I stated that my "...point, however, was that they were manipulating bore diameters to concentrate hail-shot in the 1600s." I expressed no opinion one way or the other--I simply quoted an old book for interesting historic info.
Most people can just take the information and digest it; others prefer to add value judgments. Finding my raw facts "not so convincing" shows you should start over and read it again. Fowler made some good points.
As to how the relieving at the choke produced a tighter pattern, again, read my original post: The author of the old book
believed that "...This widening serves for two things which are that the pressure, and force which the powder makes in the narrow part of the gun may be less with that widening, in order to give ease to the hail shot, that it may leave well, and keep together..." (The key word here is "believed.")
I read this to mean that the relief at the muzzle, in the author/gun maker's experience, reduced the "blown pattern" effect by reducing pressure and "easing" the shot out of the muzzle, thus improving the shot count in relation to a similar bore-size and length barrel without relief at the muzzle. Fowling piece barrels were quite long at the time, four foot and more, and the burning characteristics of the black powder often depended on luck of the draw vis a vis source of supply. And if you think about it, constricting the muzzle would have made loading more difficult in the days before breechloaders. EDM
