Some light historical reading for the holiday weekend
The Field March 7, 1891 Vol 77:325
"Mr. Griffith on Shot-gun Patterns"
http://books.google.com/books?id=inQCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA234Lloyd: the answer is of course yes; less constriction = wider pattern. However, the barrel specialists of the past knew what they were doing with the admittedly inferior 'machine-made' U.S. guns, and the pattern may be deformed or the POI changed.
Cut with caution, and get thee to the pattern board thereafter.
And what we could do today with the 2" chunks of barrels littering the floor of turn-of-the-century machine sheds
