CHOKE-BORES. 297 



ria, Muzzle Loader. Other parties can be referred to 

 if necessary. Be sure not to forget the place. 



'' J. L. Johnson." 



When these circulars came to the notice of the 

 gunmakers in Chicago and St. Louis, they ridiculed 

 the idea that a gunsmith in the little burgh of Young- 

 America could do what the oldest and best gunmakers 

 of the world had been unable to accomplish ; but 

 sportsmen took a different view of the matter, and 

 very many sent their guns to Johnson to- have them 

 rebored. All these guns were tried before as well as 

 after boring, and with the same charge, and as 

 received were found to average about 15 pellets to the 

 foot, while after boring as high as 55 and 60 was 

 often reached ; and no gun was considered finished or 

 returned to its owner until it would target 40 or more. 



While Johnson w^as carrying on his experiments a 

 man named Robert M. Faburn w^as about the shop, a 

 great deal, taking items ; and learning, as he supposed, 

 all about the process, contrived an expanding bit or 

 reamer with which to do the boring and secured a pat- 

 ent for it. (The patent is dated June 25th, 1872, and 

 numbered 128,379.) As it happened, however. Fa- 

 burn did not get a correct conception of the process. 

 He had not been allowed to examine the barrel with 

 the breech-pin out, but from an observation of the 



