Old Ford2,
From all of the readying I have done on original 4 and 2 bores, which there really isn't very much information on originals because there weren't very many made, there seems to be a couple reasons they were mostly smoothbores. First off primarily they were made for dangerous game hunting in Africa and Asia, mostly Elephant, and the long shot on an elephant is 50 yards, reading the accounts of Baker, Selous, Taylor etc.. the common distance was more like 10 to 35 yards. So accuracy really isn't an issue, a smoothbore will shoot just as well at that distance as a rifled barrel. Second reason is recoil, rifles produce more recoil than smoothbores, and with a gun that already has excessive recoil you really don't need to add more to it when their is no advantage. And the last reason is pure speculation on my part, but most of the originals(25 that I have actually documented) were made by the high end London gun companies, Holland and Holland made Bakers "Baby", my opinion is that the time and effort to retool their equipment for a one-off barrel was probably deemed to be not economical and therefore wasn't done. But that last one is just speculation on my part. In more modern times I have seen several 2 Bores in various configurations that all had rifled barrels, the reason mine is smoothbore is because I don't have the equipment in my shop to rifle anything that big.
Colin
