doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com do you see any problem with opening up chambers

Since you bought an old hammer gun, you likely knew that it would require low pressure loads. So you either reload or have a plan to get low pressure loads, correct?

If you reload, why not just shorten the hulls? If you don't reload, you're going to have to locate low pressure loads anyway. There are not likely low pressure loads available in 2 3/4" anyway. You surely don't want to shoot SAAMI pressures in an old hammer gun.

Mike and Steve RE-READ the initial post and came to the correct conclusion.........it's ALREADY been sleeved....so, hello, we don't know how much back boring or metal removal has taken place........based on these known facts, it would be wise to leave it alone and shoot as is....with the proper size and load.........

Double "D"s here Monty.....diviation = disaster........



Best,

If you do not wish to reload, outfits like Polywad, RST and New Era make wonderful low pressure cartridges in 2-1/2". They are a wee bit more costly than 'promotional' shells at your local department store, but I, and many others, feel the added cost is a small price to pay for some peace of mind! Cheers!

I fail to see any "Rants" so far in this post. Nor an appearance of the leave it alone police...I see common sense comments, just shoot the thing..If it aint broke, dont fix it..

Rockie, if you can't hit birds or targets with 2 3/4" shells, you have a good point: you give up nothing going to 2 1/2". (Sorry--the devil made me do it!)

Seriously, postoak's advice is very sound. About the only short-chambered guns that have problems with 2 3/4" hulls--assuming the pressure is appropriately low for the vintage gun in question--are ones with short and sharply-angled forcing cones. But if you're not going to shoot it a lot, just buy 2 1/2".

Yup!

I'm shooting a 65 mm (2 1/2) chambered 16. RSTs retail at LL Bean's (closest store that carries them) for $11.95 a box. By way of comparison, regular retail on 2 3/4 Remmmie Express goes about $14. And specialty 16 ga loads are rarely under $10.

The RSTs will kill your game or targets just as dead and at a lower pressure. Ask the phez I shot earlier this week - dead from an RST before it hit the ground.

You're only going to save some money if you reload - you can cook up a box of any kind of load for $6 or less. But if you reload, you can cook up an appropriate load for your gun that will not require cutting metal. If you want low pressure loads, there's a whole group over at 16ga.com (the 16 ga society) devoted to developing and pressure testing low pressure loads for 16 ga guns. They have something like 1000 or 1100 different loads on file.

Kent's 12ga 2 1/2-inch IMPACT tungsten matrix at 6500 one ounce or 7500 with 1 1/16 ounce does wonderfully on ducks for me. My 2 3/4 bismuth handloads don't compare.

Relative to a post on another BB, I was just rereading what Sherman Bell wrote in his "Finding Out For Myself: Long Shells in Short Chambers" piece in DGJ (Winter 01). I'd forgotten that Bell did conclude that while lengthening the forcing cone usually reduces some of the (relatively modest) pressure increase that results from a longer shell in a shorter chamber, lengthening the chamber reduces it even more. But then the question becomes: Is the pressure reduction gain offset by the loss of steel in an area where the pressure is very high? Not to mention the fact that if you're dealing with a Brit/Euro double, lengthening the chamber without reproof renders the gun out of proof. Although the latter is a somewhat moot point here, since the gun is a sleever--which means it had to be submitted for reproof after sleeving. But if the chambers were going to be lengthened, the time to have done that would have been at the same time the gun was sleeved, at which point the gun could have passed proof both with the longer chambers and as a sleever.

Larry I can hit them - it is just the hit them while flying that I struggle with.