Eccentric wall thickness

[John Havard]

I'm broken hearted over having to return a very nice DHE that I bought over the internet because of its barrels. It was from an estate sale, had almost 90% original case color, vibrant D4 damascus barrels, eye-catching wood, the whole schnizzle. It was in extraordinary condition and was something that I had been wanting for quite a while.

Using my Hosford wall thickness gauge I checked the barrel walls and found that the top of the right barrel paralleling the top rib for about 6" had a thickness of only .018". Imagining a cross section taken through the barrel and viewed from the breech end would place the thin barrel section between 1 and 2 o'clock. At 3 o'clock the wall was at .024" and by 4 o'clock on the cross section it was at .032". This section of thin wall ran from 16" to 10" from the muzzles. The left barrel had nothing under .024".

Both bore diameters were consistently .732" so perhaps at some point they had been polished - it's hard to say. The chambers had been lengthened to 2 3/4" which was a major turnoff and might suggest polishing. However, removing .003" from a true .729" in the course of polishing the interior of the bore wouldn't cause the eccentricity I measured.

Has anyone else ever run into this? And I'll be posting a "want to buy" note in that forum.