Polychoke Opinions?

[VirgilCaine]

Anyone use a Polychoke or a Polychoke II, specifically with the muzzle brake?

Anyone find them useful?
I'm thinking of getting one put on a general purpose pump action shotgun.

 

[GeezerwithGuns]

Look ugly..........work great! I used to have a Remington auto with a poly choke. It was perhaps the most versatile shotgun I've ever owned. A word of caution, however, installing one immediately lowers the value of the gun. I haven't a clue why though.

 

[kentucky_smith]

I would get one that installs like a screw-in choke.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Ugly? Weird. I think they look nifty. Besides, this will be on something cheap, like a Mossberg Maverick or a Pardner Pump or something.

 

[jcord]

I had one installed on my Benelli Super 90. It worked great.
Other guns I own have choke tubes. Poly chokes give you open choke to extra full with a simple twist of the choke. I like them.

 

[Mr. 16 gauge]

My first shotgun was a Mossberg M500 pump with a 30" barrel and full choke; after shooting my first woodcock and getting nothing but a head and a few feathers, I elected to have a polychoke put on and have the barrel cut back to 27". Since that time, the gun has accounted for a couple of truckloads of small game and waterfowl. I have also put one on a Remington model 11 in 16 gauge.

It definitely makes a shotgun more versatile.

I will caution, however, that just because the gun is on a "modified" setting, doesn't necessarily mean you will get modified patterns.....you still need to pattern your loads.

 

[evbutler462]

No gun resides in my safe or afield with me unless it wears either a Titan or Polychoke. Been using them for too many years to go back. Started out with a Lyman, sold the gun, then went to Polychoke. Best money I've ever spent.

Nothing can compel me to do anything with screw-ins except to hunt the nearest trash can and toss them. Only variable chokes for me. I have no patience with a pocketful of choke tubes, sooty fingers, and hunting the wrench to change the tube real quickly.

Titan and Poly II I highly recommend to all.

 

[Chris Rhines]

Had one on my old 3-gun shotgun, threw it away. Polychoke screwed up the installation, causing the gun to pattern two feet low at fifteen yards. I cut it off, then had the barrel reamed and threaded for conventional choke tubes.

- Chris

 

[kingjoey]

We make a brake/suppressor unit that fits on the outside of the shotgun barrel. Choke tubes are really thin and easy to bend, we try to avoid going that route whenever possible. They can either be installed via notching and setscrews or by silversoldering. Tightens up the groups, reduces recoil, and dissipates muzzleflash almost completely. Plus they weigh a lot less than a Polychoke and aren't as expensive to buy or install. If you are looking for an adjustable choke go with the Polychoke, if you are looking for generally tighter groups and reduced recoil check out our unit. Our product is generally for LE/tactical applications, but I take our demo gun out and shoot clays too

Here's the link to the info. Pardon the dust, we're still upgrading the site

KA-1212 brake/suppressor

 

[RNB65]

My dad had a polychoke installed on his A5 back in the mid 60's. I've never patterened it to see how it shoots. But over the years I've won many a fat frozen fowl at turkey shoots with it set on full choke.
.

 

[Oldnamvet]

I wonder what a SXS or O/U would look like if you had enough separation of the barrels to put them on ?

 

[byf43]

I had a Mossberg 500 with a 28" barrel with Polychoke, many years ago.

The choke was a joke. (Sorry.)

If you went from Modified to Full, then back to Modified, the pattern was not repeatable.

Sold that (IMNSHO) piece of junk as fast as I could.

 

[ArmedBear]

Contrarian view, FWIW:

I think chokes in general are overrated, and IMO with shotguns, some people tend to focus on the unimportant, ignore what really matters, and wonder why they don't hit anything.

I accidentally left an IC choke tube in my trap gun after some experimenting and shot a 27 yard handicap round (clays are hit at 50-70 yards or so). When I did my part, the birds broke with authority. You could tell the difference between the Full and IC, but not as much as you'd think.

Now I was using handloads with good shot in them. Still, that box of 7 choke tubes in my shooting bag suddenly seemed more like a 2nd Grader's bag of stupid good-luck charms than something that I had any real need for.

If you don't want to carry a wrench and deal with fouling, and that's understandable, carry a couple of extended tubes instead, like the SC guys do. That said, I can't think of a time I've ever swapped the tube in my pump gun while hunting. I guess I know the setup going in; if you hunt different terrain on the same hike, I suppose you might switch. The likelihood of your needing more than two chokes, even then, is essentially zero.

I find having 2 barrels to be a better solution. My fixed IC/M 20 gauge O/U hunting gun works great, and I don't have to do anything with my chokes, I don't have a weight on the end of my barrel, and the thing is easy to clean.

It's not like you can dial up a choke setting after the bird flushes out, anyway, and if you are going to use the same gun for HD, deer hunting, and doves, you probably know what you're doing that day, beforehand.

As far as a muzzlebrake... Shotguns don't have much pressure left at the end of the barrel. I've shot guns with a lot of porting, and it doesn't do ANYTHING noticeable at all, other than make for a louder gun and a cleaning chore.

I've felt the difference in recoil when I've tried two things:

A friend with a small machine shop and experience reamed out the forcing cones on my little 20 Gauge quail gun. That actually made recoil noticeably less harsh, and it was pretty conservative amount of lengthening. Of all the new "gimmicks" offered on recent shotguns, this one actually appears to do something positive.

A gun that fits the shooter will not feel harsh, nor will it have detrimental muzzle jump. I can put a double-tap in the same place with a new O/U I recently bought, and I don't notice the recoil. It has no porting or brake, and it's about the weight of a Mossberg 500, maybe an ounce or two lighter. It does, however, appear to fit me well. I've had other guns that didn't work so well for me.

 

[kingjoey]

As far as a muzzlebrake... Shotguns don't have much pressure left at the end of the barrel. I've shot guns with a lot of porting, and it doesn't do ANYTHING noticeable at all, other than make for a louder gun and a cleaning chore.

Porting doesn't help. Our brakes use a baffle setup to reduce recoil, there isn't enough pressure to use a nozzle-type brake on a shotgun. We never opted to do any angle porting on shotgun or rifle brakes, it redirects a lot of gas back into the brake and makes the gun noisier for the operator and less efficient. You really have to have a big cartridge to get any appreciable benefit from angle porting. Even the ones that use it such as 50BMG rifles also run very large baffles, wonder why?

BTW, pressure isn't what makes a muzzlebrake work necessarily. Recoil force is equal to mass times acceleration, so to counter that force you need an opposing force that reduces/redirects mass and/or decelerates it to recover the kinetic energy. High pressure rounds through an angled brake force the gases back at an angle. This redirects the mass of the propellant and accelerates it back at an angle, thereby countering recoil. The other option is to put baffles in the stream to give the gases a solid surface to impact against. Rather than using smaller ports and trying to stop then redirect the gas, you simply provide a larger baffle surface to absorb the force from the fast, yet less massive gases. Look at it hypothetically, if you threw a 100lb wieght out of a plane at 5000ft with a 20' parachute and it fell at 20mph how much larger would the parachute need to be to yield the same speed reduction with the same weight but at an altitude of 20,000ft? The change in mass and density effects the efficiency. That is why larger baffles help reduce recoil and porting doesn't. However, there is a point where size becomes an inconvenience. On a 35lb 50cal rifle it might not be a problem having a 5lb muzzlebrake 4" in diameter, on a 7lb shotgun it might be a problem

 

[ArmedBear]

kingjoey, that may be, but the device the OP asked for looks like this:



That said, since the gas isn't the reason for recoil, how does the baffle to halt its forward motion reduce recoil effectively?

If you look at a .50BMG muzzle brake, it's just a much larger rear-directed port. It's pretty obvious that that would work, but also that it works just like any other muzzle brake, just with enlarged, angled vents to redirect more gas over a larger area, like a parachute as you said.

But how does that have any connection with your design?

 

[Pete409]

My experience with Poly Chokes has been positive. They work correctly and were properly installed to shoot to point of aim.

One thing though and that is to forget the "vented" Poly Choke. It does nothing useful and simply makes the noise MUCH louder for the shooter and especially for anyone standing a few feet off to the side of shooter.

The first Poly Choke I had installed was the "vented" model. After a few weeks of using it, I got out the hacksaw and cut off the vented portion. Problem solved. It still worked just fine and was much quieter and more pleasant to shoot.

 

[Oldnamvet]

Since the vented model is about $10 more than the standard, I would guess this is "getting more bang for the buck".

 

[kingjoey]

ArmedBear, what we did is run with a thick wall to provide as much bearing surface as we could without getting the weight too high. The large slots reduce the weight and allow rapid venting so that we can get as much of the gas to go through the ports as possible, any that continues out the muzzle is lost as far as getting any recoil reduction from it. The brake has nearly the same ID as the bore of the shotgun so there isn't room for the gas to vent around the wad. So as the wad passes through the brake the gas will try to accelerate outward causing it to travel directly into the baffles and then outward. There isn't enough mass of propellant or pressure to warrant trying to redirect the gas, it's basically a matter of trying to interrupt the flow of gas while it is still travelling fast, basically putting obstructions in the stream to force the gas to decelerate suddenly and pull the brake forward. It basically strips off the gas as the wad passes through. The Polychoke works on a similar principle except it uses more smaller baffles. The problem we ran into was that vertical slots tended to get bad plastic fouling when the gun was hot. The horizontal slots ran cleaner (250rd interval between cleaning) and help with flash suppression and keeping the sight picture clear. The leading edge of the wad tends to catch the edges of the vertical slots and leave plastic residue/shavings, whereas the horizontal slots hold the wad in place and reduce the amount of residue. We tried several different prototype designs and found that this fairly simple arrangement yielded the best compromise between recoil reduction and flash suppression. It works best with faster loads, slow heavy loads aren't going to get very good recoil reduction in any baffle-type shotgun brake, longer barrels will also reduce their effectiveness as the gas stream is slowing down because the propellant has pretty much completely expanded. On 12"-18" barrels they tend to work best, shorter or longer barrels get less efficiency so we wouldn't recommend them for something like a Serbu since it probably won't help the kick much and will make the gun far louder, likewise we don't recommend them for long barrel skeet/hunting guns. For your average size HD/patrol shotgun they work very well and also keep the muzzleflash suppressed so your low-light vision doesn't get affected. Hopefully this explains things a little, sometime I'll have to write down a detailed explanation to cover the details. Usually the customers that we supply are at one of our demo shoots so they get to experience it firsthand which explains things better than I could. Maybe we should have made them look scarier like Tromix did

 

[VirgilCaine]

One thing though and that is to forget the "vented" Poly Choke. It does nothing useful and simply makes the noise MUCH louder for the shooter and especially for anyone standing a few feet off to the side of shooter.

The first Poly Choke I had installed was the "vented" model. After a few weeks of using it, I got out the hacksaw and cut off the vented portion. Problem solved. It still worked just fine and was much quieter and more pleasant to shoot.

Ah, so it's one of those "loudener" muzzle brakes. That's something I wanted to find out. Thank you.

 

[kingjoey]

Virgil, any muzzlebrake is going to cause an increase in noise somewhere. Some of them send the noise all over, some of them direct it in certain directions.

 

[sm]

My take:

Folks do not learn to shoot shotguns as we once did.

Folks used to investigate and verify what a barrel did with loadings, it does not matter what a barrel is marked to be choked , nor what a box of ammunition says it will do.

Height of brass has no bearing on how powerful or how far it will shoot either.
Activ brand shot shells for instance were all plastic, and had no brass at all.

Even before modern components such as plastic wads, folks tried guns and loads before they bought. One to see what make and model best fit them, and to also see what a pattern board revealed with loading with various fixed chokes.

Including how to get IC-like performance out of a Full choke barrel.
Yes, you can get a fixed choke to perform like another choke from a fixed choke barrel.

Chokes are dependent on the quality of the person doing installation, so many barrels were ruined being converted to screw choke systems.
Original barrel was shot to see POA/POI and upon choke system installed the gun did not shoot POA/POI.

Polychoke and Cutts, were inovations that did have a place for some.
Shotguns are pointed - not aimed.
What came out was older eyes, though focusing on target -pointing, could better shoot.
Some had cataracts, others had lost an eye to diabetes and other eye problems.
Polychoke and Cutts assited with peripheral vision, meaning while pointing, better assisting with swing through, and lead.

If...If a Poly or Cutts was installed correctly, it assisted such persons and on those rare times when one aims, assisted them as well.

Hustling is what me and mine used Poly and Cutts for.
Ours were true, shot POA/POI.
We showed up with a "turd" on the end of our gun. Exactly what we called them.
The Cutts, sound is sharp! Especially resonating off a low or hightrap house in Skeet.

Uppity shooters with fancy guns, gun cases, shooting clothes, attempting to buy skill and targets. Looking down on everyone else not shooting the latest and greatest guns and gear.

We'd show up in a rag-tag truck, car that puffed blue smoke.
Dressed like we just come out of the fields , or plant work, or whatever "low class labor" we did.

Guns cases were shabby and would not zip, these looked worse that gun cases tossed in trash cans...where we actually got some of these cases.

JC Higgins, pump gun with a Poly, 870 with a Cutts and mud, and dirt on stocks that looked like we had just come in from hunting, or had not cleaned the thing since we the last time we did.

Cigar box lid was opened, one paid to play...

Pitiful looking reloads, with wax and electrical tape to keep the pellets from spilling out - "Guess I need to see if thing still shoots, mind if I fire a few off?"

Snickers, laughter and then the sharp sound of a Cutts.
"Ya'll really wanna shoot against us with a turd on the end of them guns?" - Uppity folks asked.

Shooting is 90% Mental and 10 % Physical. Physical is the gun, loads, etc.

These guns fit us, we knew what the loads did from patterning them.

"You folks don't know about vent ribs yet?
Why my fancy gun has a vent rib and two beads..." -Uppity would say.

$1.50 an hour is what I was making at the time. If a fella made $125 a week working in retail for 40 hours a week , that was good money!

$50 to play the game or more, depending on the game.

Uppites were chuckling, and decided to let the young folks shoot first, and get that easy money "out of the way.
I ran 'em. I got $200 out of that cigar box.

Mentors tossed $100 in the cigar box and they ran'em

After about the first box, watching that turd, it messes with the mental game, add that damn Cutts and it being sharp sounding.

Mentor tosses $200 in the box. "Me and Young-un here ain't through playing, any takers?

We carried concealed always, even on the range. Some Uppity folks get real upset when you takes their money and you head off with a old truck puffing smoke when gears shifted.

Best recall mentors and me left with over $1,200 dollars of the Uppity's money that day.

Yeah, for some of us, there is a place for plain barrels, no beads, Poly and Cutts.
We have some real fond memories too...*wink*


How raised - what you do.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Virgil, any muzzlebrake is going to cause an increase in noise somewhere. Some of them send the noise all over, some of them direct it in certain directions.

Well, I mind it more if the sound goes back towards me than out where I'm shooting--I don't mind more noise, as long as it's to where I'm shooting.