Recovering Gun Store Commando. My Blog: The Clue Meter
“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.”
Glenn Reynolds
Last edited by Drang; 07-14-2019 at 05:58 PM.
Recovering Gun Store Commando. My Blog: The Clue Meter
“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.”
Glenn Reynolds
Easiest way to remove dimples is drilling through them. Not going below 14 inches might be the simplest route since you are limited on receiving replacement parts should you need to replace springs and such. One source for information and expertise is any warranty center of a major manufacturer. Technicians at one may be trained on various models.
FN comes to mind.
I belatedly remembered that the Kuhnhausen manual on my Remington 870 was not a manual on the 870, but rather on Remington shotguns in general. Off to the bookshelf! However, I was quite surprised to see no mention of port sizes for barrels under 21". (Neither did I see any mention on shortening barrels.)
Anyways, I thought "sod it" and chopped the barrel off. It ended up being 35cm, or about 13.8" long due to how the support struts of the vent rib were arranged on it. And naturally I messed up the initial cut so the end of the barrel was not even near square, so I had to work on it with a file... Still not quite right, but I figured it was close enough to take out to the range.
Initially handling the gun, the balance feels flat out weird. Not wrong, just... different. A sporting shotgun enthusiast who is used to front-heavy guns would probably lose their mind trying to swing with this thing, but if you think of it as a different type of firearm than a sporting shotgun, it does not feel inherently bad in any way. Doing room clearing in my house for a grand total of half a minute or so, this thing handles incredibly well indoors compared to a regular shotgun! Very, very handy and nimble piece of kit.
At the range, I first loaded the gun full of 24 gram skeet shells. I knew there was no hope in hell it'd cycle with those, but I thought after some DIY gunsmithing with primitive tools, starting off with low pressure ammunition might be a good idea. And yup, the gun didn't even try to cycle. No surprise there. Next up, a 28 gram sporting load caused short stroking. So the gun was actually trying to cycle with these! This was a positive sign. The short barrel definitely seems to need a bit more gas than the 21" barrel, but not ridiculously more. Next up were a few different full power buckshot loads. These functioned without a hitch. Slugs, a couple of sporting loads were surprisingly weak and failed to cycle, but hunting slugs worked just fine. -0 body hits from 25 meters were not a problem, but I will need a bit more refined aiming reference for, say, head shots. I'll have to shoot the gun more and in colder weather, but initially it seems to work just fine with full power ammunition. And it's not very picky about which full power ammunition it's fed, either.
Patterns were rather large, but then again the ammunition I used was mostly left-overs that hadn't performed very well in other guns. Point of impact was surprisingly high. Then again, I was shooting with just what was left of the rib, so it might be I just don't know how to aim with this thing. I'll get one of those fibre optic beads for the gun, some different ammunition and see where it shoots then. Might want to finish squaring off the end of the muzzle, too, in case that has an effect. I am tempted to try to cut threads for a choke into the barrel, but the tool for making those is rather expensive and I would have to turn it by hand, so... We shall see. (Another alternative would be to hire a gunsmith to do that, but... I haven't had the best of experience with local gunsmiths.)
Since everyone loves pictures... Here she is:
Would a +1 extension or one of those magazine cap lights fit there without poking past the muzzle?
New barrel compared to the 21" "short" barrel:
If anyone CONUS is inclined: http://www.midwest-distributors.com/...ies_p_265.html.
Yes. Let it. It serves to protect your muzzle in the event of a drop (especially more important if you thread it for chokes). Thats why Remington factory extensions protrude past the muzzle.
As for recoil springs, back in the day Wolff made a competition 1100/1187 spring kit. I dont know if they still do, but it might be worth a call. Kinda pricey, but worth it. I tuned my customized 1187 Premier with it back around 2002.
Dammit, I still love the 1187 so. I am getting in to Benelli M1s, which makes me chuckle because my slicked up 1187 was built to compete against them 18 years ago (sigh....). But there is something that keeps me eye-balling older Remington 870s.
If I thought I could make a Magpul 870 stock work, it would screw things up for me even more
Last edited by Brian T; 07-31-2019 at 02:23 PM.