No, not a jug choke - I did that to the little .44 smoothbore, and while it continued to shoot ball well enough for rabbits to 40 yds. it really turned on with shot. The area I enlarged by about .003/4" was about 4' long, 2" back from the muzzle. I shot 10 straight from the 16 yard line once- HA!- once. I was shooting 1/2 ounce of #8 1/2 shot - reclaimed, at that. Every bird broke in 1/2 or a small piece only came off. I thought I'd missed the last one, but was told a piece came off and they gave it too me. I think they wre seeing things. The rest of the guys were shooting 2ounces in their 12's and magnum 12's, but way too much powder- like 4 1/2 drams- there were more than a few sore cheeks that day.
: Reverse choke - that would be tight at the breech, tapered to larger at the muzzle- nope- the other way 'round. A slight taper, breech to muzzle, with the muzzle being 2 thou tighter. I read an article back in 73, I think, explaining the heavy machine rest guns of the 1880's & 1890's, and their choked barrels with just that same, or even steeper taper. The .50 barrel I was shooting at that time was made of some kind of leaded steel, easily worked, but tough. It had a 38" twist, a bit slow, but OK for short slugs. The 370gr. TC maxiball shot especially well in it, running an inch at times off the bags a 100yds. using a tang sight and hooded aperature on the front. I wasn't very much into asthetics in those days, but was an accuracy nut. That came from position & bench rest shooting, which I also did some of. The choked barrel gave consistancy to my groups, with more under 1 1/4" than before,so there was an increase in consistant accuracy.
: I wanted to do that to the .44 smoothie, but never got around to it after putting in the jug shoke to improve it's initial horrible shot patterns. The jug worked for shot, but the straight choke, breech to muzzle would have improved both, of that I'm certain. The ball/patch will easily take the extra slight choke at the muzzle, and load more freely as it went down. Upon ignition, the ball would obturate slightly, and get tighter, on the way out, kinda like what the US army's progressive depth rifling did, being deeper at the breech than at the muzzle. I didn't known until recently, that they were rifling much the same as the British Enfields. The rifling was .015' deep at the breech, but only about .003" deep at the muzzle. The (minnie) ball would be held tighter and tighter, the closer it got to the muzzle, but wouldn't be excessively so, as would happen with a normal choked barrel's muzzle. 2 or 3 points of choke in the full length of the barrel is nothing to the round ball or a slug for that matter.
: Lets see how it shoots first, before doing anything like that. Once you get a good load for her, I'm betting you'll be surprised at the close range accuracy.
Daryl
, might as well use it up. Due to the low pressures, (relatively) the T-shirt probably stood up OK with 80gr. but 120gr. Swiss - about equal to 145gr. GOEX??? Pressure's getting up around 7,000/8,000 LUP, maybe, according to Lyman's .58 data.(an guestimation by failing memory syndrome)
