The management (or non-management) of pitted barrels is a difficult subject, with quite varied opinions among double gun shooters and gunsmiths.

1. Removing metal doesn't make a barrel stronger – duh!

2. Most American doubles started with thick walls.

3. It is almost impossible to accurately measure the wall thickness at the bottom of a pit or crater.

4. Pits are frequently found just past the forcing cone and are of greater concern because it is a high pressure area.

5. I've had barrels that looked terrible in the distal 6-8 inches in which the pits were completely removed by honing of only .0015"; the bore enlarged from .729” to .732” and resultant wall thickness above .025”. The ability to remove pitting toward the muzzle may be limited however because of less wall thickness and eccentricity.

6. Honing is only to be performed by an expert, with repeated measurements of the wall thickness during the process.

7. There must be a good reason that the Birmingham Proof House requires removal of pits prior to re-proof.

8. It is next to impossible to adequately clean a deeply pitted barrel.

9. It is critical that further erosion at the bottom of the pits be stopped (see #8).

10. W.W. Greener and others documented improvement in pattern density in a few guns that had been used extensively, one an estimated 80,000 shots. Greener thought this was from 'burnishing' the bore. This was of course before the era of plastic wads.

11. The claims that pitting either opens or tightens the pattern by 'retarding the wad' or some other mechanism are unproven.

12. Any vintage gun with a ‘mirror bore’ is very likely to have already been honed.

I favor pit removal by honing or with backbore reamers, but many do not. With a previously unhoned American gun barrel, there is probably adequate wall thickness to allow removal of several thousandth of an inch of metal. I also believe if the minimum wall thickness (MWT) is already too thin to allow removal of the pits, the barrels should not be used, with any load.