[RickR]

New forum member here. After decades away from shotgunning experiences including hobby restorations, I recently bought a basket case top lever 12 on-line with the intent to have a fun shooter for occasional Skeet or a grouse hunt...maybe even as a Cowboy shooter. Fingers crossed the seller's description of modest pitting but shootable was accurate, I had some old 10 bore wads that I sanded down to 12 ga. and some Pyrodex RS for my BP rifle. I cut off a few AA hulls at the crimp, got a 3dr. 1 oz load to fit, and when the gun arrived, within an hour I was at the range. She went bang with no issues and the cyl. bores were in evidence with huge 10yd. patterns. So I ordered proper wads and began the restoration.

First surprise is chamber length. Visually minimal forcing cones, the chambers are smooth out to 2 3/4", but when using the depth gauge, the forcing cones are really like another 1/4" of chamber, just less polished, to a really minimal step up into the bore of less than the thickness of the plastic hull's wall thickness. Didn't give it much thought, so modified my load to fit a normal 2 3/4" hull and full crimped 1/2 dozen for another test. Not finished, but shootable, I drove to a private club and as a favor, they let me fire those 6 at station one Skeet. Hit 5 of 6 even dealing with a lot of drop-at-heel.

Got the gun looking right 'purty", and with a combo of hand powder dumping and my dusted off MEC loader, I loaded up several boxes (2 3/4dr. RS, 3/8ths wads, 1 oz. in a shot cup cut from a WW wad), drove back to that skeet range only to find the closed Covid-19 sign. Aargh! New gun, no place to shoot.

Basically wanting to learn more about the gun, I joined this forum 3 days ago. But the data here is overwhelming. Not only have I found no real ID info (top lever SN 48xxx) age? grade?; but information overload as I tried to follow the threads on safe low pressure loads. Surprises include constant references to factory brands with the posters assuming the reader knows of them, and how common it appears that the conventional wisdom of no damascus ever even with black is NOT on Parker guy's don't do it radar.

My gun appears to have been honed to "improve" the pitting, and reading the admonitions about wall thicknesses, but without plain info on details, I'm now nervous my gun might not be safe enough to shoot with confidence.

I assume my load is very low pressure (???), way less than the 8000 PSI smokeless threshold often cited. But...

My bores measure .734...trouble is without knowing what they might have been before, that doesn't define how much has been honed away.

And at the chamber end, lengthening the chamber forward AND honing the bore have removed most of the forcing cone. But I don't have an unaltered gun to stare down as a visual comparison.

The barrels ring like a tuning fork when struck. But otherwise, how do I know my gun is ok other than a long string and a proof load risk?

Advice? Help?

Thanks,

RickR