doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Upland Gun Company barrels

It isn't quite that simple Ted.

Both barrels should shoot to the same place. I am aware of a Garbi that required eccentric choke grinding to achieve this and a Beretta that shot the left barrel 8" left and low that somehow was within factory specifications.

The issue defeated Sturm Ruger entirely. They got out of the SxS business way quicker than they got into it.

William Larkin Moore says this about a product they import and sell:

"All Rizzini B. guns have special steel barrels which are proof-tested at 1200 Bars, as well as pattern-tested at the factory."

I wonder if they actually do. John says no.

I owned a Ruger Red Label that had regulation issues. But, I had purchased it used, and couldn’t point the finger directly at Ruger, since others owned it before me and I don’t know what they did.

But, I’ve been present more than once when a gun was being described as poorly regulated was fired by someone else, and the regulation issue went away. Graham, a poster here who retired after a long career at Webley & Scott, noted the same thing, many, many more times than I.

Sometimes, it is the Indian and not the arrow.

Best,
Ted

Ted is exactly right about this. So many things affect regulation of S X S guns. Among them are load being fired (not only payload weight but velocity as well), how tightly the gun is being gripped, and even the weight of the gun itself. I have tested many for regulation and found that little, lightweight sub-gauge guns are much more subject to varying degrees of regulation than are heavier, big bore shotguns.


Someone here, maybe all involved with the exception of Rizzini who I'm certain already knows, need to realize that "pattern testing" and testing for regulation are two entirely different things. "Pattern testing" is not a blanket statement that covers regulation as well, unless it is specified as such in the description.

How so?

Since the publication of Jones and the proven fact that shotgun patterns are random in shot distribution, 'pattern testing' for pattern quality (like Oberfell and Thompson did) would seem to be pointless.

This leaves us with pattern size at a given range and point of impact.

Since testing anything for confirmation of quality requires a standard to test against, certainly a reference load is chosen and the gun pointed in a repeatable fashion at some target that would record both the pattern size and point of impact.

The data would be there and instantly available after one shot from each barrel.

Jones' publication on pattern distribution hasn't yet become so universally accepted that it now includes regulation, whether you agree or not.

Call any gun manufacturer and ask them about their guns' patterns and the reply you get will address evenness and size. They will not address regulation unless they are asked. Believe it or not.

I didn’t claim it did. Quite the contrary. I indicated that it made testing for pattern quality, ie distribution and ‘patchiness’ within the pattern obsolete unless you have an enormous sample size and even then your results are only going to validate the randomness of the system. It’s been done.

There is little doubt that regulation is trusted to accurate assembly jigs and not the old world method of test and try until it’s right.

If it isn’t right before you braze it up, it will be that way forever.

If that's not what you meant by your addressing it, why did you do so in a conversation about regulation?

You were discussing what ‘pattern testing’ consisted of…. if, as you claim, it does not include regulation it must be confined to pattern size and ‘pattern quality’ since there does not appear to be anything else to test when ‘pattern testing’.

My reference to Jones was to point out that the ‘pattern quality’ part of ‘pattern testing’ would now in light of modern analysis appear to be a waste of time.

I further indicated that any pattern sheet or plate shot during a factory test firing would show both pattern size and point of impact.

Thus, if they expend two shells on a completed or near completed gun ‘testing for pattern’ as the ad copy would suggest they do, they have the status of the regulation of that barrel set staring them in the face.

You're tilting at windmills. No gunmaker sees it, or addresses it, as you do. Simple fact.

I met a guy at the most recent Vintagers shoot with an Upland GC 12 gauge. It was all tricked out with vent rib on 32” extended choke tubes barrels (yuck). Anyway, it seemed like a nice gun and he liked it, a lot. $11k for all that. We didn’t discuss barrel manufacture though. He’d had the thing to the UK to shoot both clays and birds. He was looking to get another in 28 gauge. I’d like one myself.