doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Using a choke gauge

I bought a Skeets some years ago, it came apart and had to be repaired but has worked OK since then. I think the phenolic tube length reacts to temperature change erratically, seems to change zero while I use it.

There was a gentlemen on one of the other forums making a better gauge for about the same cost but uses an aluminum tube that's much longer. I like it better than the Skeets and keep it at home, the Skeets travels to gun shows.

I'll see if I can dig up his contact info.

Hear, hear!!!

It still amazes me that some esteemed members that have been part of this community for several years still don't grasp basic information.
I am very, very aware of my ignorance and that everyday I am to be exposed to new information, but once I get it ...

I don't mean to be rude, just don't give people money in exchange for useless stuff!

JC

Anybody else recommend one of these?

Looks like I'm universally out-voted on this one. Oh well, I keep on learning.

However, I wonder how many of the guns I see and "measure" with my Galazon guage have really been reamed out to such an extent that I can't even tell open choke from tight. I think maybe not so many.

Whenever I buy a gun or if a seller will let me shoot it, I find a refrigerator or washing machine box behind a store and carry it out to the woods and shoot it. It seems to me that the choke comes out about what I measured on most of'em...Geo

Yes, I have one. It's OK if the major bore isn't beyond the reach of the legs. Even then, sometimes you can get it past the chambers and cones to measure the bore if there isn't a rib extension in the way, measure the choke area on t'other end and do the subtraction to come up with pts. of constriction.

jack

As I said in a previous post, I bought a similar, if not the same Enco gauge from Brownells, they are really handy and I like mine very much. Compact too, you can put them in your pocket. Just remember to take your vernier gauge along.
Mike

I bought the Enco house-brand gage first and liked it so much that I bought another version (also from Enco) that is much higher quality and holds zero better. The first one is in my portable gun inspection bag (tiny flashlight, tape measure, Enco gage, complete set of snap caps, digital calipers, patches, rags and a bit of oil). The better gage is in a drawer in the shop. I'd like to find one with longer legs, but don't want to spend the money on Mitutoyo or Starrett.

The Skeets guage may be Chinese made but, they did a pretty durn good job on the day they made mine. A machinist/choke maker friend of mine made his own out of very high quality materials and, my Skeets will track right with his. If you are not a barrel man who uses it regularly every day the Skeets should last you a lifetime.

Stan

Eightbore, I wonder if things changed from pre-WWII to post-war guns. I've observed the same thing you have on the E. German Merkels: often underbored, sometimes quite significantly so. I just acquired a pre-war (1936) Sauer 20, and it goes the other way: marked 19 on the flats, and the bore gauge confirms it's overbored from the standard 20 by about .012. And I've recently seen photos of a couple pre-war German 16's, one of them on this BB, that were 16/1 guns. Maybe Raimey would know how common overboring was in those older German guns.

Possibly. Alternatively my 20 ga Skeets sucks.