The blowup pictures has been making me a little worried, squeamish if you want to call it that. Finger and possible wounds will do that to you if you let them. How safe is that new gun or even the old ones. I already shoot low pressure loads when ever I can. But is that enough? Are my barrels safe to shoot? Case in point.
I bought a used set of barrels last weekend to add to a 20 LC Smith I have been restocking. The barrels were so close in both serial number and near perfect fit it seemed like a natural thing to do was to fit the extra barrels to the LC Smith. They were supposed to be 28" full and full.
Before I fit them to the gun I decided to see how they measured up. And the numbers did not add up. The barrels are for a 20 ga.. The chokes were just too much for a 20 I thought. I expected .020 to .030. and had near .040. Well the chokes were that compared to five inches from the muzzle. Two inches they were more like .022-.025. And the bore had a odd taper to it, not a constant bore I expected to see. They looked clean no pitting present, too clean I thought.
The bores had been reamed, cleaned up in dealer jargon. The result was five inches from the muzzle the barrels walls were .016 and .012. Now that area is way past my fingers so no risk of my hand getting messed up. At the end of the fore arm they were a decent .025 or so. But the profile of the bore and the wall thickness confirms a very poor reaming in the past.
The thin area started about half way down the barrels. The only thing I can figure is that they used a un-piloted reamer to clean up the barrels and it wandered off bore or the pitting was deeper at the muzzle end. Either way the barrels were scrap.
So I started think about my options. Sleeving is out due to cost. I had a set of 20/28 and 20/.410 tubes and thought maybe they would fit the barrels. Turns out the chambers need to be altered and the chokes reduced to get the tubes to fit. So next week the barrels and tubes are going to be sent out to have them fit to one another. The barrels are also going to be stamped as carrier barrel use only. So my 20 Smith will be a fun gun to shoot skeet with the extra 28 and .410 tubes in the carrier barrel.
To think just a few years ago I would not have thought of or known how to measure a set of barrels. Now I do and even though the tools to do so are not cheap I will not shoot a old double without using them to check the barrels. So starting tomorrow I am going to start measuring every set of barrels I own. Any too thin will be pulled from the list of shooter. I probably have measured a third of my gun when I bought them but now understand the need for complete safety checks for all of them. For peace of mind I am going to measure them all. I suggest you do the same if you can.
