DYI jug choke?
- Thread starter Smokepole
- Start date
Before you rush off and do one, I suggest you accurately measure the wll thickness of your gun. I am thinking a series of measurements over the last 10 inches of barrel and on several axis rather than just one run or one line. Barrel walls can vary significantly in thickness both around their circumference as well as along their length.
cheers mooncoon
cheers mooncoon
Thanks, Mooncoon; The one smoothbore I'm thinking of doing has plenty of thickness to the barrel in that area. Another antique I wanted to do will not have enough material near the muzzle. I can see this by eye rather than needing to measure. One has a thick barrel and the other is very thin.
I would think it would be a bit of a challenge to jug choke a barrel. You are probably trying to enlarge the bore about .020 or a bit more tapering to nothing about 1" or so before the muzzle. I would think that would require a specially made adjustable reamer that could be expanded while still in the bore.
My own experience is that it takes an awful lot of honing to remove more than .001" of material and that a reamer is probably the only way to effectively remove adequate material. Perhaps an easier way would be to ream the barrel straight back from the muzzle then silver braze a choke into the muzzle or install a threaded choke tube after the reaming, assuming the bore was the right diameter to permit that.
cheers mooncoon
My own experience is that it takes an awful lot of honing to remove more than .001" of material and that a reamer is probably the only way to effectively remove adequate material. Perhaps an easier way would be to ream the barrel straight back from the muzzle then silver braze a choke into the muzzle or install a threaded choke tube after the reaming, assuming the bore was the right diameter to permit that.
cheers mooncoon
A standard or screw-in choke is a bear to muzzleload with cards and wads that fit the rest of the bore. Slow, clumsy and inefficiant.... and just a lot less fun, so a jug choke would be worth the effort.
There has been quite a bit of disscussion about it on another board, and it doesn't sound too hard. There is a fellow who will do it for $60US, but I think he does it on a lathe, as he wants the hardware removed from the barrel, that and shipping to and from the US sounds like a lot of hassle.
The 'jug' part of the choke is only about 4" long, so I think one might be able to do it by honeing from the muzzle. The taper should be a matter of moving the hone in and out to create a taper. I need to get a cheap barrel to practice on... maybe I could practice making the jug shape inside a piece of tubeing.
There has been quite a bit of disscussion about it on another board, and it doesn't sound too hard. There is a fellow who will do it for $60US, but I think he does it on a lathe, as he wants the hardware removed from the barrel, that and shipping to and from the US sounds like a lot of hassle.
The 'jug' part of the choke is only about 4" long, so I think one might be able to do it by honeing from the muzzle. The taper should be a matter of moving the hone in and out to create a taper. I need to get a cheap barrel to practice on... maybe I could practice making the jug shape inside a piece of tubeing.
