doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 14" long forcing cones?

I stumbled across the fact that the new Beretta 692 has 14" long forcing cones:

"Also, the OptimaBore Steelium barrels have a super-long (360 mm) forcing cone--meaning more durability, increased shot consistency and accuracy, and lower felt recoil and muzzle rise."

http://www.beretta.com/en-us/692/

Say the diameter of a ten gauge bore is 0.775 inches. And say the diameter of a 12 gauge chamber (towards the muzzle) is 0.792 inches. Say the bore diameter of the Beretta "OptiumBore Steelium" barrel is 0.740 inches.

If the forcing cone is a true cone:

# It would appear that the diameter of the forcing cone is larger than the diameter of a ten gauge bore for about four inches into the forcing cone

# How can the wad stay straight?

# Why don't they just put a 12 gauge chamber on a 10 gauge bore and do away with the forcing cone?

Doesn't one of the clay shooters here (Stallones?) shoot a ten gauge with 12 gauge chambers?

Has anybody here every measured a "OptimaBore Steelium" barrel with a bore gauge?

The marketing guy that came up with the term "Steelium" should be horsewhipped.

The wads must be okay to get the shot out the muzzle end in decent shape. That's much less a 'step' than chamber mates are able to work with. For prying money out of someones fingers, they might have called it steal'em.

Doesn't Mossberg do something like that with their 835 pump? 12 g chamber with 10 g barrel. I have only seen one, but the person shooting with it was deadly on ducks with no cripples, if i remember correctly.

That Fryberg fella was a genius, and Beretta maybe used the same marketing firm?



"The barrels are taper choke bored, by the celebrated Taper system, to insure the strongest long range shooting qualities, the best possible target, the highest possible penetration, and being made in the proper proportion of heft at the butt, the minimum of recoil is obtained."

Yes, i shoot 12 ga some in 10 ga guns. One is chamber lined and the other I shoot. 10/12 gaugemates. Recovered wads show some slight flaring of the skirt, but not much. I shot the chamber lined S Grant in a tournament recently and it was great. My 1894 Remington Trap gun has .752 bores so, it was not unusual in 1898 to shoot over bores

I have a Sterlingworth 16 which is chamber sleeved down to 20 ga. The 20 ga wad easily seal the 16 ga. bore and delivers very good patterns. The chambers were trashed due to two paper shells being left in the gun for several decades. The chambers had pits that were like craters on the back side of the moon. Forced to chamber sleeve it I decided to go down to 20 ga and redo the extractor to make it into the long range dove gun of my dreams. The 30" mod and full barrels are great for long range doves. My son used it a few years ago on opening day and quickly bagged his limit but opening day doves are often fairly easy. He did make a few long range shots that were very impressive.

A few years ago there was a seller/dealer taking old 10 ga doubles and chamber sleeving them down to 12 ga and then selling them as pigeon guns.

My experience is that "The Celebrated Taper System" consists of a barrel having the choke at the muzzle like any other choke system. Where it differs from the "Conventional System" is it lacks a parallel at the extreme muzzle end of the choke but rather is a tapered cone for its entirety. The full chokes on my Lefevers which are bored on the taper system measure in the vicinity of 4" long which is longer than the cone & parallel combined on most conventional chokes.
My very early Lefevers also have larger than standard bores, presumably for the use of oversize wads in all brass shells.
The British Wildfowlers Association as I understand it developed what they called a chamberless gun for use with the thin brass shells. The chamber cone extended into tghe bore itself with no secondary forcing cone at all. The bores were vastly oversize & did require the use of special wadding.