Using Steel shot

cornbinder49

cornbinder49

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Just a quick question for you guys. Everyone knows about using steel shot in an older shot gun is bad new. Now my question is about honing your barrel. I've heard it works, and I've heard don't bother. Take your barrel and having the choke honed out and then it's all good for steel. Is it really that easy, and if thats the case can an older barrel with a mod or improved choke be used with steel with out being honed? This is more for my own curriousity then anything, I just bought a new BPS in the fall for water fowl hunting, but I still have an older B2000 and was just wondering. Thanks for any info
 
Whether you hone the choke to "light Modified" or use an existing barrel with mod. choke, the barrel must be of the right(modern) steel and have enough "meat" at that end. If in any doubt about steel type, contact the manu. or an expert on that make. "Enough meat" would be self explanatory once you look at thickness at the muzzle. Some guns, esp. doubles are just not thick enough for either scenario....IMHO
 
I had a 1957 870 opened to modified and have a 1964 Belgian Browning A5 in modified too and they shoot fine and have shown no ill effects.
 
In some older guns the taper leading into the choke is too sharp an angle to handle steel without becoming damaged. In fact some guns have even been damaged by shooting large lead shot. The damage isn't always readily apparent, but if you hold the shotgun at an angle to the light and look along the outside of the barrel you can see the fine shadow formed by the shallow ring.

I had the chokes and taper of an older Franchi over/under bored out. It has spent several seasons in the duck marsh and works fine with steel. Somewhere I read that if you can shoot 6 shots of steel through a barrel without damage you can stop worrying - of course if you've managed to ruin your barrel there's no point in worrying about it either.
 
I was told by a gunsmith that even my old Wingmaster only needed to be bored to "cylinder" to deal with steel shot. Cylinder for lead is modified for steel. Differently rated. Shoots both really well. No damage. $30 upgrade. Aside from that barrels are plentiful and fairly inexpensive.
 
bogie said:
I was told by a gunsmith that even my old Wingmaster only needed to be bored to "cylinder" to deal with steel shot. Cylinder for lead is modified for steel.
Click to expand...

That is what people say but it is not true, the gun will yield different patterns with different loads. I have a gun with a skeet choked barrel that should according to the theory you are using throw between light-modified and modified patterns, well it actually patterns closer to Improved cylinder with smaller steel shot and nearly full patterns with larger steel shot.

Patterning is the only way to find out what sort of "choke" your gun really has.
 
I think at this point most of the talk of steel damaging older guns is pure speculation. If the full choke has been opened up, I think you would have to do a lot of serious shooting to ruin the barrel. I have heard of a lot more people using steel (myself included) with no problems than I have heard the other way around. Some of this talk I believe is by the gun makers . What better way to sell a bunch of new guns after steel was mandatory than to say it will ruin your older gun. I think 50 years from now people will still be shooting their older guns with steel. And even if it does scratch the bore or whatever after a thousand rounds so what. What good is the gun anyhow sitting in the corner unused because it supposedly wasn't designed for steel. It was the same when black powder went by the wayside. People were told you can't shoot the new "smokeless powder" in their old damascus gun because it will blow up. Yet thousands did because they couldn't afford another gun (some still do). Same as when the current powder of today took over the smokeless powder of yester year. Weren't supposed to use it in the guns from the early to mid 1900's yet thousands did. Now if something did happen to a gun it likely wasn't really the powder loads fault as much as it was the gun was probably in unsafe condition to start with probably caused by abuse and neglect. You can have new guns of today that maybe shouldn't be shot after a few years use. If a person wants to listen to those against using steel in older guns that is fine, but there sure will be a lot of useless guns sitting around.
 
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