doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Another potentially stupid question re: wear.

Oh, the sound of maturity! Here we have a man who has grown far beyond most of us! Thanks, Humpty Dumpty. Your comment is refreshing. Hope you get to feeling better. Stay warm. (And your English is far, far better than my Russian!)

OK, here goes, YES, the chokes have been worn out of some guns.
I am talking about some OLD guns. I have seen side by sides that can almost cut your finger on the choke end. Whether is was from shooting or cleaning, I do not know. These barrels were made of soft steel or iron. In fact I know of one gun that was practically cyl/cyl and when made was full/full. The current owner had hunted with if with great success and decided to retire the gun and get a new one. Of course since his old gun was full/full that is what he bought. He he he, he either missed or shredded the bird. Had to have her opened up.
Mike

This is common on well used muzzleloaders. However, I suspect it's more from the ramrod than from shooting.

Good answer, Jim. Post 1880 guns of quality with paper thin muzzles are abused in some way other than just shooting. I am back to describing worn out bores or chokes from shooting as an old wives tale.

If you took a foot tall stack of 600 grit sandpaper and a long wood stick, and tried to wear out .001" thru the entire bore length, I think you'd run out of sandpaper or wear the cartilidge out of your elbow before you got .001" out of the barrel.

Chuck, we talk about chokes, not bores. With 600 paper I will "wear" choke for .001 in one minute.
I guess nobody saw worn modern guns here. 100, 200 thousands rounds that's OK, but 500 thousand or 1 million - I fix (honing) several sporting guns with colossal run and all of them got some issues with cones and pre-choke areas.

Geno,
I agree, .001" in the choke is not too hard to get to with sandpaper or high volume shooting. The abrasiveness of powder residue and fricion of the wad would seem to be the wear mechanism IMO. I haven't noted any forcing cone erosion in my shotguns, but I don't have huge numbers of rounds thru any of them except one that has had the forcing cones lengthened after much of that shooting. Certainly, I, and maybe a bunch here have seen erosion in rifles and handguns. I had a .264 Win Mag that the throat and bore (for a few inches) looked like it was sandblasted after I had fired maybe 1000-2000 rounds thru it.

Eley, Kynoch works, used a Boss sidelock shotgun to test fire cartridges as part of their daily quality control program.This gun fired over 1.5 million rounds prior to its retirement.

Winchester used M-12's for the same thing.

Wonder if anyone is on record about their choke condition after years of that.

Is that the Michigan AuSable area TD- you are right Sir- there are no stupid questions on the DoubleGunShoppingNetwork, just stupid replies, and they don't get any stupider than ol' Homeless Joseph from Memphis-- he must have been the character sketch for old Tommy Hanks as "Forrest Dump"- 'stupid is as stupid does' I have, among other 12 bores, a M12 made in 1937 with at least 50,000 shells including steel loads through it, the bore mikes at factory, shines like a mirror and all the parts are original and when I hit the trigger is goes Bang every time. Also a Parker 12 live bird gun and a M12 Trap gun, easier to document by recorded number of birds, whether clays or with feathers, shot over the years- both guns have had close to 400,000 rounds through their respective barrels, still like from the factory--RWTF