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The watertable is dished, rather than flat. I've got an 8 gauge shotgun that is similar. What was the reasoning or advantage to this? It lets you make the chamber end of the barrels thicker and the bar weaker, but is there any more to it? Obviously on much higher pressure rifle rounds they didn't feel the need to trade action flex for barrel strength. Was this just an early technique that was later found to be unnecessary?

As always, thanks in advance for the education.

Bob

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The water table is dished for the following reason.

One must maintain a certain chamber wall thickness for hoop stress. One must maintain a certain amount of strength at the root of the action.(Junction of the standing breach and the watertable)
In order to satisfy both of these criteria it is often necessary to make the action fairly deep in the bar. This coupled with the large diameter barrels makes the whole gun somewhat deeper from rib to underside than is cosmetically pleasant.

By dishing the action one leaves strength at the root ( rather like the ribs on an RSJ) to resist flexing and lowers the profile of the gun. As crack propagation is, except in very rare cases, from the furthest extremity inward this design achieves both things.
It does however make the gun harder to joint in the first place.

Regards

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