So I have this Remington 11-87 Express. The gun came with a 28" vent rib barrel that seems ridiculously long to me. I never actually used that barrel, I got a 21" barrel with "rifle" sights that seemed a more reasonable length. However the gun never worked quite reliably, especially with a magazine extension, so it has lately just been sitting in the safe while I got an 870 Police I have had much better success with.
While our new firearms law is meant to be more restricting, one little oopsie they made is shortening the minimum length requirements for long guns rather significantly. Which got me thinking... Since that 11-87 never did work the way I wanted to with a magazine extension, what if I were to make a shorty version of it? Just because I can, and because the anti-gun politicians would freak out if they ever knew they made a gun like that legal. I could take that unnecessary 28" barrel (that I am stuck with, anyways, due to legal technicalities) and lop that down to... Well. How short could it go? I know there are 14" version in the US, but couldn't the barrel be shortened a tad more and still be the same length as the hand guard? Or is there some reason why 14" was the length of the short barrel version?
How much skill would shortening the barrel require? Have angle grinder, will cut, or..? Of course for better shot patterns having the cut barrel re-threaded for chokes would probably be the wisest move. Some sort of a sighting system would have to be put on the barrel, but I'm thinking the vent rib could help here.
A simpler choice would of course be to leave the gun as is, perhaps sell the extra barrel and just use the gun for skeet or trap. But not being all that mature, I get a kick out of the idea of creating a gun that until a short time ago would have been incredibly illegal.
Before I fire up the ol' angle grinder, has someone here shot one of those short barrel 11-87's? What can you tell me about shooting one?