choke comparison
 

I have a VH 12 bore that letters "275 pellets of size 7 shot in a 30" circle at 40 yards"

Also a DH 12 bore that letters "350 pellets of size 7 shot in a 30" circle at 40 yards"

Any rule of thumb to guess the chokes on the VH? I know from shooting the DH that it is WAYY Full.

that gun has some kinda tight chokes....charlie

My guess is that the 350 count should be 250. What's the S/N?

You would have to know the shot charge to make the correct determination. Having said that a 275 pellet count even with an ounce and a quarter load would most likely be something like a light full. A 350 pellet count would be off the chart full, almost ridiculous. I am in agreement that is probably an incorrect number but we will see what Chuck finds.

Ill post the letter on the dh in a bit....it is a VERY early hammerless, three dog DH12. In
looking at the letter last night, i notice that it specifies 1 1/8th charge, but not the shot size....hard to imagine that a 30” pre 1900 gun would have been patterned with shot smaller than 7’s and not mentioned in the letter.

Mark you indicated here it did not state the shot size but the first post indicated that #7 shot was used. What am I missing ?

The letter on my DH # 94555 states cylinder 110 #7,gun has .000 constriction and mod 240 #7 with .022 constriction. All in a 30" circle at 40 yards.

You aren't missing anything...I must have imagined seeing the #7 shot on the DH letter (attached) Again though, even if it were #9 shot (unlikely in 1890?), this seems crazy tight.

350 pellets is about an 95% count of 1 1/8 oz. of #7 shot.






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error

Xxxx

As I said, this gun is crazy tight....I shot a Turkey last year, using 1oz RST 5's, at about 30 yards almost blew his head off..didn't realize how tight the chokes were then, and shot the left just in case...

Here is a summary of what I have learned over the years from this forum about Parker pattern tests collected from several past postings...
http://parkerguns.org/pages/faq/PatternTest.html

Mark just out of curiosity have you ever measured the constrictions on this DH ?

nope, but im going to drag it out and do just that!

I'll be curious. You might not get your 12 bore gauge down the barrel of this one.

I double checked the records and the pellet counts in the research letter are accurate. According to the table found in the 1882 catalog, there are 399 pellets of size 8 shot in 1 ounce using Tatham shot which is what Parker used. If my math is correct a 1 1/8 oz. load of size 8 shot should have 450 pellets. The records don't show what size was requested but size 7 shot should only have 327 pellets in 1 1/8 oz. so they must have used size 8 shot. That would mean the RH shot 72% and LH shot 77%

Thanks Chuck...cant find my dang bore gauge...but a dime will not enter the left barrel of this gun...the only other 12 I have this tight is my Baker Sterling Trap gunwith 34”bbls.

I'm sure Chuck is right in Parker Bros using #7 shot to regulate chokes on most guns of that era. However, Parker would fulfill special requests within reason and it's not unreasonable to think they may have regulated some chokes with other shot sizes.


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