I doubt seriously if this barrel was on the gun when it left the factory . When it was consigned to us almost two years ago it came with a 30" full and 32" full barrel . The other two barrels were sold separately . I would like to have had the 32" barrel as well . Oh the barrel is a vent rib . I have looked quite a bit thru old Shooters Bibles and this 28" mod barrel is the most open vent rib barrel I could find for an A-5 magnum . Did they ever make an A-5 12 mag vent rib barrel that was IC ?

I did take the old gun out yesterday afternoon and patterned some Estate 2 3/4" 00 Buck at 25 and 40 . 25 looked pretty decent but 40 was so so . Tried some Winchester 3" one ounce slugs at 25 and 50 yards , the 25 yard group was great and amazingly the 50 yard group was almost as good . I'm not in the habit of shooting 3" shells and much less slugs , but amazingly the recoil from these was no where near what I anticipated . I have a Browning Superposed 12 Mag I shot some 3" copper plated bird loads and that one opens up a whole new world 🙄

In many years of buying, selling and trading A-5s, I have never heard of nor seen a 3" Mag barrel bored IC; of course that doesn't mean they never made one. For years off and on I worked for a major Browning dealer based out of Washington DC (am I dating myself much!!?) with satellite stores in the MD and VA suburbs. In all that time I saw exactly ONE nib Belgium A-5 3" Mag that came from the factory with a 28" VR barrel; the man I sold it to still has it. He did a lot of pit hunting for Canada geese and was an ardent duck hunter as well. My brother (a good friend of his) and I have tried to buy it back from him a number of times, and his answer is always the same: "Talk to my kids when I die!".

As you know, Belgium Brownings are never really exactly 28", 30", 32". I have a mint A5 3" 1966 Magnum with a 29 1/2" barrel in full. We would call that a 30."

The Japanese A5s have exact measurement barrels. I just checked the spare Jap barrel for my Belgium Light 12 and it is exactly 26" as advertised.

With the A5, there is 3/4 of an inch of the barrel inside the receiver of the 12.

My Light 20 that I call a 28" gun is really 27 1/2."

I kinda thought this Mag 12 would be nice for geese and of course DEER . But the goose thing will always be on the back burner if I have a 10 gauge side by side that's not knocked off a goose in my hands 🙄

Barrel length
 

Of course those barrels are all exact metric lengths. So 27-1/2" at 2.54 cm/inch = 70 cm and so on. The chambers are the same. A 65 mm chamber at 25.4 mm/inch = 2-1/2" and a 70 mm chamber = 2-3/4".

You remember all those metric conversions from college physics, right?:rotf: