used in lieu of gauge when describing a smooth bore shotgun makes me wonder what century the folks that use those terms are living in? Are they still going to work on horse back? Dumping the night's waste in the street gutters? Is George still our King? For these are all things of the 18th century. The bore gauges to standardize the diameter of a smooth bored firearm would came along in the latter part of that century. Indoor plumbing still a century away. I doubt if anyone here owns a functioning shotgun whose bore size was not standardized by a bore gauge.
Then maybe it's just me wonking

Comb, stock, lock, butt, rib, trigger, lever, barrel, bar, bead, chamber, cone, hammer, checking, etc., etc., etc., are all parts of the gun as well and were likewise "coined" back around the time that 'bore' was coined. Should we use different terminology for those as well??

You are saying then we should all use 18th century English. Chamber and cone are 19th century about the time of gauge. What do we do with those terms?

It's definitely just you, wonking.

Like debating if it's 'whisky' or 'whiskey'.

We know what it means, so who cares?

I say ...you'll just have to deal with it,bore was around alot longer than gauge .

Then again I'm from Newfoundland I've never said ass in my life ,it's always been arse...,we use me instead of my in reference to a belonging (as in kiss me arse )...come to think of it we all sound funny up here anyways ,or so I've been told by the rest of the Country .

Come to think of it , we call a break open gun a "breech loader" (we say britch loaden gun ).

Bore ain't that bad,but then again it sounds right to me because I come from the last British colony in the new world

But this could just be me shagging around ...as Newfies are apt to do

Shagging! At least you're not just wonking...

Tits up in the rhubarb, eh b'y?!

I walk to work.

Come morning, I have a view nail to set up.....

I will make no further to do about it because this is a wonderful site and a treasure trove of good gun information so I will attempt to cause no further stress. But to me saying bore in lieu of gauge is like scrubbing ones nails across a blackboard. Perhaps it's the engineer in me or perhaps it's because I find England a lovely place to visit but not a place where I would like to live or imitate.

scotch and wanker,

You are a real getlemen pooch

Regards Lennart

There is one size gun where "gauge" is inappropriate but there is no confusion when "gauge" is used. The .410.

Methinks thou doth protest too loudly. I use "bore" all the time and prefer it.

Yes me son...arse over kettle is another

I'm restoring a 10 bore greener ,and a 16 bore Husqvarna


When I e-mailed Mr. Greener ,he referred to it as a 10 bore ..so I guess its all right.

Cover and covert in reference to grouse woods is one that I don't get...I use cover some times but mostly its just that dandy spot down by the river .

I suppose the .410 is .410 Caliber. If you want to use Gauge for it, its a 67.49 Gauge/Bore.

Maybe we should just start refering to bore sizes in millimeters...YACK!

As a Brit yes I know born on the wrong side of the pond!!! Though I can remember those engineering history lessons at College in the now very dim past about Stevenson Maudsley and IK Brunell including how Bore appertaining to the barrel diameter of a shoulder mounted sporting guns and certain metal pipes came about. And you can say it could only be the Brits who would come up with such a system and the system is based on the British Pound weight. So to make sense of it a four bore was the diameter of one of the four equal spheres of Lead that would weigh exactly one pound then so on for the number of balls in one pound for the eight ten twelve sixteen and twenty. Now that can not be the whole story because it is Brit and there where exceptions such as Swann drops the favourite food of the large bore Blunderbuss and to further complicate matters Newcastle shot and London shot where two entirely different things. It is amassing how we made things work but we did and in the words of one of the lecturers it was all done by trial effort judgement error and a lot of luck!!!

Cover and covert.

"Covert" is a derivative of the Norman French "couvert" which referred specifically to woodlands that were hunted for deer and boar. Within UK at any rate somewhere called a covert was either ancient hunting woodland or a recent plantation constructed with sport in mind.

"Cover" is quite different and refers to the brash and understory either in woods or out of them. Thus an open understory in Trickley Covert might lead the picker-up on a shoot to say "Pretty open cover in there, it won't take long to find that bird". Similarly a dense gorse and bramble thicket might produce "We'll never get all of them out, the cover is just too thick for the dogs".

Eug

Nothing wrong using Bore and Gage/Gauge when talking about shotguns.... Now about a bunch of old Girlie men playing Dress-up wearing Wool clothing and neckties While shooting in the Summer in North Carolina " Boor's"

Now I don’t know about neck ties in the summer but wearing that fine product of the Brit Hebrides seems fine to me in the winter with a neck tie. You can call it eccentric if you like but to dress smartly wearing a collar and tie to a driven shoot, silly as it may seem it is done to show respect to the birds for which you are going to end their life. Well jeans and ‘T’ shirt is a little off the mark for a Funeral here, to truly understanding us Brits would take a lifetime of living here and without tradition we Brits would be lost because it is probably the only thing we can do well.

You Brits treat your visiting American cousins well. That's another thing you do very right.

I'm Scots Irish and my kin, since the 18th centurey and have fought the British on every opportunity, but I feel more at home in London then I do in New York.

You guys have it all wrong...

With the current price of ammunition, the proper term is Gouge.

As in 'give me a box of those 410 gouges'.

We English use bores ,as opposed to our American cousins who like gauges . We go shooting wear as you hunt something we do on horse back .We have cartridge cases you have hulls .
All I suppose are correct in there own way ,language changes and new terms come in to popular parlance .Traditionalists will use the terms we grew up with ,except when talking to "foreigners" who don't .

I have read your arguments for using the term bore in lieu of gauge and as I suspected they are without merit. You are overlooking the fact that it was the British that not only pioneered the industrial revolution but brought quality control to it. One of those controls was the introduction of gauge to bring a standard of measurement to wire diameters, sheet metal and among other things shotgun bores. This in turn brought to the world a better life. I do not see the use of bore vs gauge being that of an Anglophile because it looks past the one of those peoples great contributions.

I am not only an American, I am a red necked one and I think of Kings and Queens as so much horse hockey, but I have learned if I want to do business with the rest of the world it’s easier doing it through a British bank like Barclays. The British lady maybe getting a bit gray, her dress a bit out of fashion, but she is still a hell of a dancer and not one to be ignored.

It’s GUAGE

Try to do a "search" in British auction catalogs for gauge. Almost nothing except maybe a measuring tool. Try a search for bore and you get lots of hits.

They use the term bore to hook in the Anglophile wattabes.

Look at it this way, an 870 or a Mossberg 500 is a 12 gauge and a Pape or a MacNaughton is a 12 bore.

Gauge is an English,not an American contribution.

There seems to be a lexicon shift when the product goes from mass-produced to hand-made.

Don, you were doing OK til here:

It’s GUAGE

Call me sometime.

Mike

If sheet steel and wire is measured in gauge, should wall thickness be measured in gauges ?





I'll go and sit back in the corner now.

oops!!
Been meaning to come visit as I have a stock problem beyond my limited ability to address, but thought you were out of town chasing those feathered devils.

You could call wall thickness a gauge only if they were of a consistent thickness over the length of the barrel and that thickness were set against an agreed upon standard.

Ha, never thought of that. I suppose we use the term bore like we would for pipe or cylinder bore in plumbing and engineering.
Would you say the term gauge came about through the use of plug gauges to determine internal diameters ?

From my old Webster's New World Dictionary for the relevant part; Bore, Noun; 1. A hole made by or as by boring. 2. (a) The hollow part of a tube or gun barrel (b) Its inside diameter: Caliber

Gauge; relevant definitions Noun 1. A measure; standard measure or scale of measurement 2. Dimensions; capacity; extent 6. The size of the bore of a shotgun as determined by the number per pound of spherical projectiles fitting the bore

From definition 2b of bore it would seem it would be correct to say a gun was a .729 bore, as to whether that would transfer to a 12 bore may be debatable, but definitely correct to say it is a 12 gauge, from definition 6 of gauge.

Yep that's the way I see it. When the English set up standards for sizes, they set up a standard to which manufactured goods could be referenced to. They used the term gauges to show that a product size could be defined as being able to be referenced against a standard measurement or gauge. Thus a buyer of a 12ga would be assured that he was getting a gun bored to a specific standard as defined by a gauge. In the same token there is no real definition as to what the bore of a 12 bore might be since it does not reference its self to a standard dimension.

Here is what it boils down to in my mind and the basis of my rant:
When the English set up standards or Gauges, they did the world a great service for they set up standards upon we could rely and build on. When we say bore as a tip of the hat to British quality and ingenuity we miss the real genius of what the British contributed at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, that of standardization. This goes along with the greatest gift we got from the English, that of self control and honesty for no people can be free from the rule of others if they can't rule themselves and their behavior.

Well now that I got that out of my system; you folks can call your guns what ever you wish. They are your guns.

Pooch is partly correct. The term "gauge" was used to define a standard but the standard was not "bore" or barrel diameter but related to the chamber. Thus, with the introduction of breech loaders and cartridges there was a need for standardization between cartridge size and chamber size. Thus the term "12 gauge" was used to make sure that the cartridge was matched to the size of the chamber otherwise there could be catastrophic consequences if the two did not match and a cartridge slipped beyond the chamber. "Bore" only determines the diameter of the barrels since a "12 gauge" gun can have barrels which are 13 or 14 bore.

I would think you would know that bore is measured by a standard size gauge ball and there are also 13 and 14 sized gauge balls amoung many others. If you should look up The Worshipful Company of Gunmakers ie The London Proof House, you find in their official literature they list shotgun sizes as 12gauge 20 gauge ect.

Face it gang there is no rational for using the term bore in lieu of gauge other then you just choose to do so.

Pooch you are too boring for me. If you can't accept reality too bad.

I guess I have been a bore but I've enjoyed this little exercise and I look at things a bit differently now. I still believe guns that have gone though a proof house should logically be called gauge as in 12ga. However when a barrel has been bored out to where it is no longer in proof because of the extent of the over bore, but still is chambered for a 12ga cartridge then it would logically be called 12 bore. A gun like the Mossberg 835 which is chambered for a 12ga cartridge but has a 10ga bore so as to shoot the 3 ½ 12ga cartridge would rightfully called a 12 bore, as would a number of other over bored guns.

You guys need to go shooting!
Regards,
Jeff

I cant believe no one made a comment about the other terminology question of gun technicana:
Whats the difference between a screwdriver and a turnscrew;?
About 80 dollars.

This is how inane some of these conversations can be.

Pooch, you must be some kind of crazy person.

Aaahh.......why is this important?....with all the great info we get here from guys who know what they are talking about.....we have a debate about nomenclature. Does this really matter...and more important , was this not answered in the early post. Thanks Brian and others who, no doubt , are cratching there heads on this one.....

No it doesn't matter, but something was bugging me that I could not figure. It wasn't bore at all it was something in the past. Now that I know what it was, it's put away.

One more point for this discussion - I usually see bore used when the gun is from Europe, and England in particular. Whether used correctly or not, my perception is that the term is more likely to be used when the individual is a bit pretentious.

One exception is the 8ga. I see 8 bore used more frequently than 8ga. This final point is important. I don't want BM thinking I said he is pretentious.