That's what Roy said to me. But here's the problem. The barrel on Roy's smoothbore 20 gauge is the same diameter at the wedding ring as at the breech and then a straight taper to the muzzle. The little silver front sight is only visible at the wedding band and not at the breech, where Roy likes to see the front sight with varying amounts of silver for different ranges.
So the first job was to take off the little silver front sight, and install a "turtle" styled sight 5" back from the muzzle, according to his taste and preference. Now the gun is going to shoot even lower, so the barrel obviously needs to be bent. But this barrel is one stiff son-on-a-gun. After many tries bending the barrel as much as I dared, it would spring right back to the same amount of deflection as before. To measure the deflection, I laid a straight edge along the front sight and breech plug, and the ruler almost touched at the wedding ring. I didn't measure it, because it meant breaking out drills smaller than #60. But with lots of encouragement from Roy, I put a 12" wrench over the handle of the "C" clamp and wound it down until the barrel pressed hard to the bench. I left it there and went and got my camera, and then took out the pup for a pee, and then came back, took the pictures, and released the pressure. Finally, I got a tiny amount of bend into the tube - enough to allow a #48 drill to pass between the straight edge and the wedding band. We'll shoot it like that, and see what happens.
this barrel has a crown and freur de lis stamped into the angle flat at the breech. I've no idea where it was made, but it isn't 12L14!!!
