doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Adding a fixed choke to an English gun

So I am purchasing an antique English boxlock with steel barrels that is lacking any choke in the left barrel. It has good wall thickness. I would like to use the gun for SD pheasant hunting.

If I were to have Briley add a fixed permanent choke tube to this left barrel would it be visible? Would it hurt the resale value of the gun? Is Briley the firm to do this for me if I decide to proceed?

Other suggestions or opinions?

Briley could jug choke the gun, they remove a little metal just prior to the muzzle to get some constriction.

I'm getting old enough that I don't worry too much about resale on the guns I actually use. It'll be someones else's problem. But, I think if there was going to be a tube in the gun anyway, I'd rather have the option of changing the tube, rather than having it permanent.

Good luck.

Best,
Ted

Bear in mind English guns tend to have thinner barrels (to reduce gun weight), and you don't mention what the guns proof measurement is and what is remaining of the barrels after all these years, so you will need to talk to Briley as to suitability.
As well, any barrel work of that type will remove the gun from proof, and that will affect value to many potential purchasers. Most purchasers of older English guns follow the adage of "buy the barrels", the rest of the gun being of secondary import in evaluation.

I think Mike Orlen installs permanent tubes.

A very common choke configuration in Birmy boxlocks was cylinder and full. Pretty well fit the criteria of an all around gun. You might leave it as is and shoot it a while before doing anything that permanently alters. Cylinder can provide killing patterns out to 25 or 30 yards, great for flushing birds. The full choke will reach on out another 10 yards or so.

Great discussion and good suggestions! Now I am not going to do anything too quickly or without a great deal of consideration. The gun was reproofed in 2009 and is reverse choked ("grouse choked"):
PROOF: Right: 728 Left: 728
READING: Right: 729 Left: 730
MWT: Right: 22 Left: 26
CHOKE: Right: 0.015 Left: 0.005
So I was not aware that adding metal to end of the barrel would take the gun out of proof. I might like to bring the the left barrel out to 0.025. Would it be visible (a line around the end of the barrel like a screw in choke)?

If there is enough wall thickness it could be jug choked some, without any tube at all, as Ted mentioned. Just didn't know if you understood what jug choking was exactly. How much choke you would have afterwards is dependent on how much wall thickness you have. Not a lot of metal has to be removed to add up to some choke because your constriction amount doubles whatever is removed from the wall thickness, i.e., if .002" is removed you will gain .004" constriction (.002" on each "side").

I'd probably choose Orlen if I were to go this route.

All the best, SRH

I have a friend that had Briley install the permanent chokes in his Boss. They looked great and if you did not know what to looking for you would never question it.
I would not hesitate to have it done myself.

shoot it first before altering it. you may be pleasantly surprised at how well it patterns, as is.

The plastic wads in modern low-pressure shells will tighten up the pattern. It's worth the cost of a box to see how much they tighten up. You could try some AA Xtra-Lite shells.