Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Ouellette
Forrest,
Would the finely ground tungston in Nice Shot or Kent TM (KTM), both having very soft pellets, scratch a damascus or early fluid steel barrel or would it slowly polish it? I've got a couple old Parkers that could use a little barrel polishing! 
All kidding aside, you make a good point but I wonder how many shots using an unprotected shot column could be shot before any measurable difference in a bore could be measured?
Mark |
Good one
I know you are kidding but intentionally shooting some sort of abrasive through your barrel would be similar to the "fire lapping" process that many rifle shooters are familiar with.
The problem with doing this in a shotgun barrel, is that the erosion is going to be at the constrictions in the bore, such as the mouth of the forcing cone and choke. Both areas are difficult to actually measure, or even closely inspect by eye. I am even more concerned with Parker guns in particular. According to The Parker Story, the shape of the choke is not a simple cone like in modern shotguns. Instead it is a parabolic curve shape, which would be much more susceptible to erosion.
As far as how long would it take shooting unprotected tungsten based shot before you would notice damage to the bore, well that's the $64,000 question. It might be 1, 100's or a 1000. The problem is that it will undoubtedly cause wear in areas first that are not easily noticed.
This would make for a very interesting experiment if someone has an old damascus barreled Parker that they don't mind potentially ruining. One could fire 100's of rounds of unprotected tungsten based shot through it and take chamber and choke castings to determine how quickly dimentional changes are taking place.
But now we are probably getting too far off topic. The bottom line is that if proper wadding is used with any of these shot materials, this discussion should be moot. Happy shooting.