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Hi all, just wanted to ask if anyone else had this issue?

its not my shotgun, its a mates that hasnt a clue about it so asked me to go round and strip clean and then rebuild with loads of cool new stuff, looks like hes been abusing the credit card at tooth and nail??

anyway stripping it down and generally unimpressed, but the main issue was when I went to slide the old front fore end retaining plate off the barrel, it gets near to the choke and wouldnt go any further, about 3" maybe from muzzle, looked at it and it was then obvious that the barrel swages outwards, both visible and its easy to feel, feels pretty even all the way round the barrel

Im assuming that something has happened to it as it cant have been made like that, else the retaining plate wouldnt have been able to be fitted.

he bought it used, and knows that it was used for slug before, could it have had slug through too tight a choke??

hes going to start making enquiries about another barrel, but thought I would ask in case anyone else had a similar issue

It could potentially (however minimally) be a slug through tight choke - however, it'd have to be a choke tighter than full and a hard slug to do it.

More likely I'd have thought is a choke that wasn't tightly fitted and lead got between it and the barrel at some point and built up.

Does the gun still have it's original chokes supplied with it?

Have you inspected the threads in the barrel that the choke threads into? Are there any obvious signs if you shine a light down the muzzle?

the choke in it has just 1 notch, his understanding is that this is the tightest of the lot, I couldnt shift the choke, have left that job till another day, and seeking advice of the more knowledgeable about shotguns.

will try and get some pics with a straight edge against it, but its not a ring bulge, the whole end, the last 3" or so of the barrel appears to be larger dia than the portion of the barrel directly behind it, initially I thought it was a design thing, maybe bit thicker wall where the chokes were, but when the fore end retaining plate wouldnt go over the barrel I realised that something was a bit wrong :)

I couldnt see anything obvious, the only thing I thought was that in comparison to a couple of pics I found online, the choke is tight, but appears to be closer to the muzzle than the pics I had seen, so maybe your thoughts regarding loose choke are in the right ballpark.

thanks for taking time to reply, I think he will just look for a barrel anyway, the guns a huge money pit, why hes spent so much on billet forends and other stuff I havent a clue, but then I suspect he says the same about my full trick 10-22 thats cost far more LOL

Personally I never use anything smaller than an "Improved Cylinder" choke for solid slugs.

I shoot modified with mine, which seems to be the most popular choice within UKPSA comps.

Don't forget full choke is only 35 thou restriction so from .729 down to 0.694 (caveated with there's a variable amount of discrepancy depending on the age / brand of gun).

Quick Google shows slug diameters vary but typically 0.650 to 0.680 - so the margin is there to use full choke but of course it varies with slug, choke and barrel brands.