.410 shotguns usually have full chokes. Yet the little guns would likely be much more effective with more open chokes, since they are mostly used with small shot at fairly short ranges. Is it possible or practical to open a 410's choke from full to, say, improved cylinder, and how would you go about it?

Thanks for any insight.

Xzec.

Had one of the Enfield .410 smooth bore muskets...had a tight spot under the rear sight, ans I started out to just lap that area to the right diameter but got carried away with working on the barrel.

Comes with no choke at all (at least on this example) so I decided to add a bit to see what would happen (true cylinder bore and the long thin shot column of a .410 are not a good match).

At hand was a adjustable hand reamer...kind of a multi-blade affir, with adjustments for expanding the reamer blades bite. With this, formed a "jug" choke...a relived over sized section back of the muzzle that would allow the shot to expand up in size, allowing theexisting muzzle to act as a "kind of" choke. By trial and error, got to about modifided patterns and left well enough alone. Has to be a long recess...seems like at least 30% longer than the longest shot string likey to be used in order to get better patterns.

With the same expansion reamer, would not be too big a trick to take an existing choke down .001" at a time...with care, as it's a one-way street and once gone you aren't putting the metal back nearly as easily as you took it away.

Without a pilot, it's difficult to keep the hand reamer is in dead straight line with the bore...the cutting teeth will chatter at the slightest excuse...and you'll need to go carefully.

Do notice some .410's are avaialble with interchangeable choke tubes now....haven't a clue how much $ it would take to adapt the barrel, or if it's possible to adapt your particular barrel, but it may be worth looking into.
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Years ago (well before my reaming of that .410), buddy of mine got into shooting single barrel persussion shotguns. After looking at the external choike tubes on a T/C pistol, he dicided that that was something he could do to his 16ga. percussion. He wanted a fast take off tube, external fo it could be easliy gotton to as he intended to remove it to load the muzzle loader, and reinstall it for each shot.

He made it pretty...and it worked...but he made the thread a little "coarse" at at one notable shot, the tube departed along with the shot charge....it's out there somewhere (years later they built a shopping mall at that spot...guess that hoime made choke tube is under the parking lot some place).

you can ream with a piloted reamer but once gone,thats what you got.brilley was doing 410's but at 225.00 to 300.00,could be less now,we don't get allot of 410's for choke tubes.the same thing with backboreing can be done with a 410 to create a choke that you can do in any smothe bore.