16ga.com ~ View topic

Joined: 16 Jul 2015 Posts: 2124 Location: Hudson,Wy

Shotgun world is a mixed bag. Drew's advice is best. It won't cost much to mail the barrel. Also, anytime you want to remotely fire a gun, an old car tire that is no longer on a wheel works better than a box. The stock will go inside of the tire and the barrels will rest on the far sidewall. The tire will "give" during recoil, thus alleviating most risk of cracking an old stock.

Joined: 21 Jan 2018 Posts: 38 Location: Colorado

Upnorth, my best recollection is that Ithaca did not list their 16 ga guns as 2 3/4” chambers until the 1934 catalog. My 1914 16ga Flues is 2 9/16” as are all my pre-‘34 Ithaca 16’s. It’s probably highly unlikely that if your chambers were correctly measured at 2 3/4” that they came from the factory that way. Thus, the advice is sound to have the barrels measured and checked. Hopefully, they come back safe.
I’m also glad that you’ve joined the low pressure group. You’ll find lots of good loading options to consider in the information that Russ sends you.
My “go to” 1oz load for 2 3/4” 16’s nearly mirrors the original turn-of the-century load that Drew references. Using Universal it comes in at 1165 and 7100.
For the short chambered 16’s I’ve settled on an excellent 3/4 oz load using International that will meet your 6000+/- psi target. It measures 1150 and 6200. You’ll find both these loads on the Hodgdon site.
The 16ga Flues is a light carrying, fine shooting upland gun. I hope you enjoy yours as much as I do mine.

Joined: 27 Jun 2019 Posts: 9 Location: United States

Thanks for the input. I suppose that, sometime after the 2 3/4 inch round became the norm there were folks with 2 9/16 chambered guns who were finding it difficult to get 2 9/16 rounds and they lengthened the chamber.

As I said earlier, I had the gun smith measure the chamber as my unsharpened pencil method wasn't working on this gun.

I have a box of load components on the way from BPI, I have a couple recipes from Hogdon and the 16 ga manual from BPI. I sent a check off to Russ from the low pressure group so I'll be looking for the CD in the mail.

Hadn't thought of using an old tire? The wife won't tolerate such an objectionable object laying around so I may have to go searching the road ditches and WMAs for one.

And you can shoot the shorter ammo in the longer chamber

As to a rimless tire, any tire store should be happy to give you
and unserviceable one.

Mike

Joined: 27 Jun 2019 Posts: 9 Location: United States

10-4 to the shorter ammo. I'll be role crimping as I don't have a loader in 16ga and I cut down the shells about a 1/2 inch.