My Parker Research Letter is in; need translation

[Mark Conrad]

In the very early guns (under 10,000) the pattern information is usually all there including 24 inch circle. An example would be 175 8 45 24 and the 24 has a circle around it. I just pulled out about 20 stock books and once you get over 15,000 in serials none have the circle size. Most stop on the yardage. The page or copy stops before you get to the circle size. So, the question is, when did they go to a 30 inch circle. Another issue is that they changed the yardage from 45 to 40 for large bore guns. In what I just found they changed the yardage in the 80 to 90 thousand range from 45 to 40. Another problem is they used # 7 and 8 shot but I can see that in most cases.

Up to somewhere in the 80000 range 12 bore guns patterned about 175 and 10 bore guns were 195. I checked the early guns where they used a 24 inch circle it appears to be the same. So, I would say they stayed with the 24 inch circle until they changed the yardage from 45 to 40. I have no way to verify this unless we look at an original stock book.

Jeff, I mailed you another copy today with the city. I suspect the 30 inch circle should be 24. If you want it changed to 24, I can do that as well.

Mark

[Bill Murphy]

Mark, thanks for correcting my guess of 25 or 20 inch circle. I knew it was less than 30. Now we know it was 24. Mark is estimating as close as he can the dates and serial number ranges where they changed the range and target for the pattern information. To add even more confusion, there seem to be examples of use of 1 1/8 ounce loads as well as 1 1/4 ounce loads for patterning. There would be less confusion if we could see all the stock book information in the PGCA copies, but, as Mark and I have mentioned, we don't have all the information that was posted in the right columns.