doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com NOT FOR BALL

Mr Hebbes - How can one discern a barrel that has been back-bored for choke? This seems like a real can of worms in the safety dept.

Measure the bores at the muzzle, find they are not choked and assume they are all original.

But then to unwittingly shoot the gun with no knowledge of the barrels being back-bored to create choke amd run the risk of accident with the barrels therefore being out of proof 9 inches from the breech? A genuinely scary sete-up.

I imagine the only way to determine if the barrels have been back-bored is to remove the breech plugs first, a daunting task for the amateur gunsmith if ever there was one. I'll be the first to admit the prospect of doing so scares the hell out of me. But the possibility, no matter how slim, of losing fingers scares me to death.

Does an easier way impossibly exist? If not, could you please explain how best to find out if your muzzleloaders' barrels have been back bored?

Krakow Kid,My comments were an expansion of the issue raised by," Old Farmer" namely, "the one year lag between the perfection of choke boring and the introduction of the,Not for Ball, Proof mark".
You can check for back boring of a muzzle loader as follows.
Using a dial bore gauge[I use an Eggerton-Chubb gauge] set to a precision master.With this gauge you can measure the inside diameter of the barrel upto 20 inches from the muzzle.The readings seen will indicate the presence of choke in increments of .001 inches.The Barrels of the gun, if of British make, will be marked with the proof diameter [eg;12, this equates to a nominal diameter of .729 inches].To remain in proof the barrel diameter for this example should not exceed.740 inside diameter.If the measured diameter was for example .750 and yet the muzzle diameter still measured .729 it would be reasonable to say that the barrel had been back bored to create upto .021 0f choke.At the same time the proof diameter maximum would have been exceeded by.010 and thus rendered out of proof!
My advice is take your gun to a qualified gunsmith and have the barrels inspected and measured with special reference to the bore diameters and wall thickness.Take no chances with your safety.

Slightly off the subject but can someone tell me why Americans call the barrel flats or the action flats "the water table"?

Any decent gunsmith has a guage for measuring interior bore diameters and could tell you about any jug choke in the barrel. But why are you worried about this on a muzzleloader? Any ball you stuff in through the muzzle is already past the tightest restriction and will comeback out the same way. Jug choking typically involves opening the bore a little larger for a few inches behind the muzzle area so the shot column sees the muzzle area as a constriction just as in a normal shotgun choke and having a transition from the new larger interior dimension to the original bore at the muzzle.

You can also probably detect jug choking if you take one of the small led flashlights and slide it into the bore. If the light is too bright cover the bulb with some semi transparent material. The jug choke should appear as a shadow line within a few inches of the muzzle.

If you have an old muzzleloader which hasn't had the breechplug pulled to examine it's condition that would be a good safety idea anyway. This needs some care on shotgun barrels as they are thin enough in some cases to be damaged if you don't put them in a vise with proper clamping.

gunman, probably because some ignorant gun writer used the term once and the rest of his brethren accepted it. Now why do some call an automobile hood a bonnet and drive on the other side of the road from everyone else in the world (except the Japanese)? Does it have something to do with living on small islands?

Anguilla
Antigua & Barbuda
Australia
Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bophuthatswana
Botswana
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Cayman Islands
Channel Islands
Ciskei
Cyprus
Dominica
Falkland Islands
Fiji
Grenada
Guyana
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Jamaica
Japan
Kenya
Lesotho
Macau
Malawi
Malaysia
Malta
Mauritius
Montserrat
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
New Zealand
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
St. Vincent & Grenadines
Seychelles
Sikkim
Singapore
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
Sri Lanka
St Kitts & Nevis
St. Helena
St. Lucia
Surinam
Swaziland
Tanzania
Thailand
Tonga
Trinidad & Tobago
Uganda
United Kingdom
US Virgin Islands
Venda
Zambia
Zimbabwe

Wow, didn't realize just how many backwaters had been infected with the right hand steering wheels! My apology. Poor effort at humor.

Roy, Many Thanks for the information, broken down into understandable language. Well, it's not just 1 gun, it's 4(!)

Seperate trips, I think.

First I have to find a competent gunsmith I can trust.

Isn't it amazing that I live in a township of Springfield, Massachusetts. Home of Smith & Wesson. Home of the first national armory appointed by George Washington. Within 6 miles of Stevens/Savage Arms. It WAS the home of the first revolver club in the country until it got closed down 5 years ago. Home of the Springfield '03 and the Garand.

And I'm scratching my head trying to find a competent gunsmith.

Times have surely changed for the worse.

My 1883 greener is stamped not for ball.

Jerry
Before many of today�s larger lumps of land were even marked on the maps of the �civilized� world those of us inhabiting smaller lumps of land tended to ride our horses on the left. As predominantly right handed it gave us an opportunity to either greet or fend off with a weapon those we encountered. As various bits of land have been occupied it has always been a puzzle to us that they have not all adopted the �proper� side of the road to travel on. When tradition is so deeply ingrained as it is here then we have never seen the need to conform to what is obviously just a passing phase!! The next thing will be someone proposing we put one barrel on top of the other or inventing a powder which doesn�t produce volumes of smoke - someone might even try to hide the hammers from view � none of which would ever catch on I am sure!!!
John