Fox Collectors

I offered this on another forum, which I'm thinking some of you may not visit, and you might find useful.

A way to make an Economy Grade Chamber Gauge.

As you can see from the first picture, I neatly and squarely cut the plastic hull body from the base of an empty 2 ½ inch RST 16 gauge fired shell. Then cleaned the rough edges a little bit. The hull body is 2 1/8 inches long.

Just insert the squared end in the chamber til it stops at the forcing cone, measure how far the end of the hull is to the end of the barrel, add that to the length of your cut off hull and you have a pretty darn accurate measurement of the chamber length.

Do likewise for the other gauges as seen in the second picture.





In contrast, here’s another chamber gauge that I made about 40 years ago. You might recognize it as one that Tony Galazan sells in his Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Company catalog. Mine is serial number 1. Tony seen me using it many years ago and asked permission to make some. Sure why not. I think the Economy Grade pictured above is a little more precise.





Hope you find this useful.

Jolly

Thanks, Bill. What a great idea!
Jim

Jolly Bill - Thanks for sharing your method of measuring chamber length. Your design was in fact a multi-tool for measuring chambers and chokes. Too bad the choke portion was eliminated from the production version. Many of us have the dial indicator type gauges but yours is so useful because of its portability. Please offer a holster on the next edition so that the sharp corners do not dig into my pockets. Thanks again.

I made a small design change. I inserted a spent 20g shell to the other end, super glued it tight, and made marks for 2 1/2, 2 5/8, and 2 3/4 inches.

Spyder,

Excellent improvement.

Thanks for the great idea.

Jolly