Hello to all.
A few years ago I came up with a novel concept, one that I would build myself a Double rifle. I have no problem building things, and do it quite often. However not wanting to go through a couple of hundred years of R&D to get things right I decided to do some research on this project. The first thing that I have come across is that I am not the only one who has had this idea. And it seems that I would of not have been a pioneer in using a shotgun action in the said construction of a reasonable, and by reasonable I mean usable double rifle. I have bought the book as it it stated in the previous posts and also have many others, there is alot of missing information however. In my quest for knowledge I came across this site and in order to use their search funtion I had to register, and in doing so discovered some more topics, like this one. My experience with double rifles is extreemly limited to having handled, but not shot a Merkel in .470 in Zimbabwe last year and looking at a Kodiak in 45-70 at Cabelas some years ago on a trip to the US. "CHECK FIRING - I know how you feel about the Kodiak, but just stating the facts." I have located and bought two J.P. Sauers in 12G 2.75" with damaged barrels, seems someone dropped something heavy on them, they are as tight as a bank vault.
So then this leads me to a few questions, for those of you who have done this before. Is your choice of calibers determined by ballance of the overall gun after it is complete or is it strictly determined by action size/strenght? And in determining barrel length is this taken from the face, case mouth, or beggining of rifling? And also it was mentioned in a previous post but could not find it, would it be possible to get an approximate barrel profile, as I dont think the standard ones for bolt guns would look very appropriate.
My decision to go this route is about 20% financial and the rest is all about the build, maybe I am strange as for many of the things that I have built in the past, I enjoy making them more than using them.
Thanks to all.