386 
FOREST AND STREAM 
July, 1920 
. PATENTED 1 
STEEL-LOCKED 
HOMER CLARK 
(Whose portrait is above) 
is a Professional Trap- 
shooter whose ability to 
break clay pigeons seems 
almost uncanny. 
His record of 
QQrf for an entire 
s O JO Season’s Shooting 
and his World’s Record for 
consecutive Long Runs 
412 AND 315 Straight 
almost staggered the belief of 
the Trapshooting world. 
World’s Champion 
is a title he annexed by winning 
the E. C. Cup. 
Perfect from Primer to Crimp* 
Send (or “Four Acer and a King" 
Mention tbii Magazine 
CHAMBERLESS GUNS 
CONCERNING A SYSTEM OF BORING THAT HAS RECENT- 
LY BEEN ATTRACTING ATTENTION IN ENGLAND 
By WILLIAM A. BRUETTE 
NTEREST in the in- 
side of gun barrels 
undoubtedly began 
with the pouring of 
the first load of pow- 
der and lead down 
the first tube that 
was utilized for that 
purpose and from 
that day to this a 
constant source of 
discussion has been 
why some barrels 
shoot with greater regularity and high- 
er velocity than others. To be sure 
there has been worked out for the rifle- 
man and the single bullet a standardized 
table of ballistics, so that the rifle maker 
knows what he can safely promise and 
the sportsman what to expect from the 
joint efforts of chemists and mechanics, 
but the shot gun with a load made up 
of several hundred pellets has proven a 
more puzzling proposition. 
The early gun makers experimented in 
various directions but were never able 
to determine why one barrel would shoot 
better than another which they had 
bored with the same tools in the same 
way quite as carefully. In the face of 
this uncertainty most of them concluded 
that the best thing to do was to sur- 
round their efforts with a weird sort of 
secrecy, which they did until some one 
came out with the choke bore principle 
which placed in the hands of gun borers 
a system of regulating the performance 
of a gun barrel with regularity. Since 
then there has been a great deal of ex- 
perimenting with the choke boring prin- 
ciple. Some borers placed the constric- 
tion in the barrel close to the breach and 
then enlarged the tube toward the muz- 
zle. Others placed it near the center of 
the barrel and then enlarged the bore in 
both directions, but at the present time 
most gun makers place it at or near the 
muzzle and some of them claim to lead 
up to it by a long taper. 
There have been many efforts pro- 
pounded about how this constriction op- 
erated upon a column of shot, but the 
consensus at the present time is that it 
retains the wad long enough to enable 
the shot column to get free from the 
muzzle of the gun and well on its way 
56 
2 ts in. long 
without danger of being broken up either 
by the outrush of gas ot the wad itself. 
In this country gun makers have 
brought choke boring, barrel chambering, 
polishing, etc., to a very high state of 
regularity and all of the standard 
American guns are turned out with 
shooting qualities that satisfy American 
sportsmen as a class. These attainments 
in barrel boring have enabled our sports- 
men to lay aside the old-time heavy 10 
gauge and adopt the lighter 12 for trap, 
duck, geese and heavy shooting. For 
ten years the graceful, easily handled 
20 has been replacing the 12 on all up- 
land shooting at prairie chickens, quail, 
snipe and woodcock and in turn there is 
now apparent a well marked movement 
among leading sportsmen towards the 
still lighter 28. These charming wea- 
pons are justly becoming popular all 
over the country and recently there has 
been brought out a little 410 that is 
rapidly attaining a vogue and promises 
to have a noteworthy place in the gun 
cabinet of American sportsmen. What 
this little weapon will do in the way of 
smashing clay targets and its effective- 
ness on quail, snipe, rabbits and all 
small game, will come as a distinct sur- 
prise to the sportsman who has never 
given it a thorough trial at the traps 
or in the field. 
The fact that American sportsmen 
have for a quarter of a century been 
moving steadily towards smaller gauges 
and lighter weapons is a clear indication 
of the attainments of American barrel 
borers. Today our sportsmen are satis- 
fied with the pattern, penetration and 
general shooting qualities pf American 
guns and, as a class, feel that anything 
more deadly than the weapons they now 
possess would not tend in the direction 
of good sportsmanship. This position 
is quite at variance with that of British 
sportsmen. There the demand is con- 
stant for more deadly weapons. The 
punt-gun is still in use among wild fowl- 
ers. Heavy 8 gauges are seen upon the 
marshes and criticism of the shooting of 
their 12 gauges and constant requests 
for more powerful shooting weapons ap- 
pear in all of the journals; meanwhile 
the sportsmanlike 20 and 28 gauges 
have attained popularity but slowly. 
(continued on page 397) 
From Greener’s Modern Shot Guns 
Cartridge chambers are bored on a taper of .015 to facilitate extraction. The cone 
of a 12 gauge tapers from .798 to .729, the internal diameter of a 12 gauge barrel. 
