Greatly Improve your Turkey Pattern for almost Nothing

[JPhelps]

All you need is a drill, shotgun cleaning kit and some scoth brite.  To view the article you can go to our website or our blog.  I worte the article back in 2004 and put it on another forum, everyone saw results.  I wanted to share it with all you guys and we can discuss the results.

http://www.primetime-outdoors.com/
http://primetime-outdoors.com/wordpress/?p=15

[SituationNormal]

Great article. Do you suppose that this would do anything to eliminate small dark spots in the barrel?

[kevinlisa06]

Polish polish polish! Been doing it since 2006.

[JPhelps]

Your barell will shine like a mirror when you are done.  It also makes for extremely easy cleaning in the future.

[kevinlisa06]

Less resistance to slow down the wad equals better patterns.

[SituationNormal]

Sounds like a Saturday project. I think that I'll give this a try when the wife is at work tomorrow.

[JPhelps]

Kevin that is the theory on why it works so well.  You want to keep the wad and shot together as long as possible as they travel down the barell.  With a rough barell the wad has friction acting against it dragging it down, while the shot itself is becoming separated.

[kevinlisa06]

I shoot a Mossy 835 and can see a nice difference before and after polishing the barrel.

[JPhelps]

SituationNormal - Did you get a chance to test it out?

[flysar]

Doesn't shot stay within the wad until it leaves the barrel and the only reason it separates once out of the barrel is the wad is lighter and loses momentum.

It makes sense that the polished barrel reduces friction, increasing muzzle velocity, and therefore the wad travels further with the shot before dropping off resulting in a tighter pattern. Has any one ever chronographed a before/after shot?

Do you polish with the choke installed so you don't mess up the barrel choke threads.?

Is it possible to polish to much, remove metal, to a point when switching to a different choke for upland bird hunting there is now a lip where the choke and barrel join up?

[Bob33]

Has this ever been tried with a rifled shotgun (slug) barrel? 

Very interesting.  Thank you.

[PA BEN]

I read some where that you don't want to over clean your shotgun.

[JPhelps]

I do polish the choke but not very long.  I put a piece of tape on the rod so I know when I am in the choke.

I don't believe you remove enough metal that it would conflict with different choke tubes.  When I look down the barrel it is completely smooth. However I have only polished the barrel on designated turkey guns.

I don't know about over cleaning but my testing has proven that my best patterns come from a freshly cleaned barrel that has been polished.