870 and 1100LT questions

[awp_101]

Thanks @Lon, I missed that one because I was focused on the Aimpoint version (which is still my preference but we'll see how long my patience lasts).

@gato naranja, slugs are a non-factor. Not saying I'll never run any but I can't see a reason in my case to even have one in the side saddle. Then again, I could be all wet... Also, one of these days I need to post pics of the bobtail Manx we had. He was a (light) gato naranja as well.

@farscott, no rib on this one.

So after going through all of the suggestions and thinking through the most realistic scenarios, I'm going to check with Cotton Branch to see about having a CROM and maybe a rifle style front sight mounted. The bead and pedestal are probably "good enough" but I think I should at least look into the possibility.

Wilson's work order sheet says they won't work on anything that's been modified by someone else. I need to see if that applies to having it refinished as well or or if it means they just won't do any custom work.

Still on the fence about the Vang barrel work. For an ordinary Earth person, is it a need to have or a nice to have? Ported or skip the ports?

As for the barrel porting, I would tend to not want porting unless I find I cannot control the gun with my chosen ammo.

That's my thought as well but I don't know if it's a big part of the secret sauce or not.

[awp_101]

I just checked out Cotton Branch on IG. He does NICE work.

I'll be in my bunk...

[DDTSGM]

Still on the fence about the Vang barrel work. For an ordinary Earth person, is it a need to have or a nice to have? Ported or skip the ports?

That's my thought as well but I don't know if it's a big part of the secret sauce or not.

I've put a lot of rounds through my Browning Gold Sporting Clays which has a ported barrel. I really can't see a difference.

I think any real gunsmith can do all the shotgun barrel work you really need for less expense - here's an example:

We recommend doing this work to every shotgun. For your money, this is the most cost effective thing to do to receive the best results in patterns and recoil reduction. The area in a shotgun barrel just in front of the chamber that directs the shot load into the bore is called the forcing cone. In most production shotguns this forcing cone is very short and at a very steep angle. We lengthen the forcing cone to 3 inches and and polish it. By lengthening the surface, several great things are achieved:

Velocity is increased by reducing the sudden friction encountered with a short forcing cone.

Felt recoil is reduced because the reduced friction allows the shot load to smoothly enter the shotgun bore.

Pellet deformation is dramatically reduced because the shock of suddenly constricting the shot load is eliminated giving more even and dense pattern.

FORCING CONE LENGTHENED $75

https://www.robrobertsgunworks.com/forcing-cone (don't know the guy just googled lengthen forcing cone)

What is the basis of the Vang Comp magic?

Vang Comp Systems was founded in 1990 by Gunsmith and Inventor Hans J. Vang with the mission of bringing innovative, high-quality parts and services to everyone who owns and uses a shotgun. Mr. Vang developed the Vang Comp System at the behest of a government agency which was searching for a way to make their duty shotguns safer to down-range bystanders, i.e. make their scatterguns shoot tighter shot patterns without the use of choke tubes. This government agency also complained about the recoil and night-time muzzle flash of the 12ga shotguns and requested a mitigation of these factors as well…

ENTER THE VANG COMP BARREL MODIFICATION SYSTEM

Mr. Vang devised a system of lengthening the forcing cone of the shotgun barrel to allow a smoother transition of the shot column from chamber to bore, thus decreasing recoil and shot deformation. He would then further back-bore the barrel so that the shot column gradually tapered and squeezed together as it traveled down the bore towards the muzzle. Before they get to the muzzle, the hot expanding gasses which account for the muzzle flash are jettisoned through a precisely-calculated and rigorously-tested array of compensation ports. This hot gas is discarded through 62 holes, 31 on either side of the front sight which contributes to the flat shooting, reduced felt recoil, eliminated muzzle flip and diminished muzzle flash characteristics of the Vang Comp System.

https://www.vangcomp.com/about/

Here's an article on back boring:

https://rifleshooter.com/2015/07/sho...ing-explained/

[awp_101]

Soooo, it's been a minute since I started this thread. I've gotten sidetracked down a half dozen or more rabbit trails but decided a couple of months ago to move some of the excess "just for fun" stuff and start getting the basic defensive stuff squared away.

I stumbled across this REMINGTON 870 EXPRESS 12 GA. Based on the barrel code it's a 1990-1991 build that appears to already be drilled and tapped so a CROM should be doable.

I’ve never seen a LT-12. Just LT-20s. Got pics?

I stand corrected, 12 IS just an 1100! They sit next to each other in the safe and when I get one out, I usually get the other and somehow by brain saw LT on both instead of just the 20.

[awp_101]

Has anyone ever used one of these? Remington Factory 870 / 1100 / 1187 Saddle Mount

It looks like a variation on the Weaver saddle mount. Aside from eliminating the possibility of using a side saddle and the potential of the screws loosening, are there any serious issues with them?

[mmc45414]

It looks like a variation on the Weaver saddle mount. Aside from eliminating the possibility of using a side saddle and the potential of the screws loosening, are there any serious issues with them?

I have, the main thing would be is they are high, if you are planning to use the SGA then the risers will be all good. Otherwise not so good.
You do need to snug the screws, IIRC, and use thread locker because you can pinch the action, I would expect especially with a plastic trigger group.

[awp_101]

Thanks! The one this would go on already has an SGA on it so it shouldn’t be a problem.

And I keep red, blue and green locative on hand so I can make this a REALLY fun project for my heirs!

[awp_101]

@TCinVA, based on your thoughts from HERE, do you see an improvement with a rifle style front only vs the bead?

I’m considering the idea of something like the XS or Trak-Lock paired with a small rds with the rds being primary and the front sight the backup when viewed through the rds if it craps out during use.

[TCinVA]

@TCinVA, based on your thoughts from HERE, do you see an improvement with a rifle style front only vs the bead?

I’m considering the idea of something like the XS or Trak-Lock paired with a small rds with the rds being primary and the front sight the backup when viewed through the rds if it craps out during use.

I've not run one with no rear sight myself, but I'd theorize you're going to be in the same sort of problem as the bead. Without some sort of rear reference it's tough to know how well you're aligned on target.

When I do something like see how fast I can plant a shot on the chest of a C zone steel plate with my rifle-sighted 870, I'm doing it at 12-15 yards. All I'm looking for, really, is to see that my front sight and rear sight are on the plate. Often when I break the shot in the .3-.35 range, my front sight is sticking up out of the rear notch. It may even have the base of the sight completely over the rear notch, but it's more or less centered up with the rear notch. Crucially, though, both my front and rear sight are on the plate. Meaning the plate is big enough in my view that both my front and rear sight are on it...which at the typical distance I'm using means that even if the front sight is above the notch it's still going to be a high chest hit.

That's harder to judge without a rear sight.

If you have the luxury of a perfect stance and mount, you can probably shoot that front-only setup and maybe even some target transitions pretty quickly and accurately. But I suspect that if I make you shoot from even slightly more awkward positions (as you might be working around cover) or push your speed then I would expect accuracy to degrade rapidly.

In either 2017 or 2018 I was in a class at Pat Goodale's PFT where we fired maybe 80 rounds total, but every single shot we fired was pretty much a test. We shot from unusual positions, around cover, with target transitions from near to far. It was also raining to beat the band, so we spent the whole time soaked. I performed very well with my 870 on every exercise we did, but especially when we did one of the final exercises of engaging a target at ~ 15 yards with buckshot in an awkward position around one side of a barricade, then transitioning to a slug and engaging a steel silhouette about 120 yards away from the opposite side of cover.

The rifle-style sights on my 870 allowed me to have a quick and easily readable "good enough" reference to make both kinds of shots quickly even though my mount wasn't anything close to what's comfortable. I can tell you straight up that I wouldn't have been able to make the same shots as easily had I been using my 870 with the XS sight setup on it instead of the Tru-glo setup on my "Humble Pie" 870 because the XS's shallow rear sight doesn't provide enough information to determine if you are properly lined up or not.

Using a rear optic as a sort of large ghost ring with a rifle-style front sight is certainly doable...to a point. If you look at the size difference between your typical optic's viewable window and the size of a ghost ring rear iron sight you can start to see why. The M16 has a big ghost ring and a small one, with the small one used for distance/precision. The optic window in a typical micro red dot is going to be like a YUUUUUUGE ghost ring rear. It's going to be too big to provide useful feedback on alignment to the target beyond a certain point.

What that point is will depend on your gun, ammo, and use case. If the gun isn't going to see use past 15 yards, then the optic as a big ghost ring will probably work just fine. You want to shoot that to test it out as a theory both with the luxury of a good stance and mount and then from more unusual positions where you don't have the ideal. If that's your use case and it can pass both of those tests, rock on.

My go-to guns are set up to handle pretty much anything I can do with a shotgun from close range speed work to long distance slug shooting because that's just my wiring about this sort of thing. I expect my go-to guns to be able to handle typical class stuff, home defense, atypical class stuff, and to go out in the woods and kill deer if I choose to do that.

...but my requirements don't have to be everyone else's.

If the electronics in your optics die leaving you with just the optic housing itself and a front sight to be your reference, if you have a good mount on the gun you can probably shoot with significantly better accuracy than most would think thanks to the assistance of a good cheek weld. But there will come a point where it's just not enough information to make a good shot. If that point is well outside your predictable use case, don't worry about it. If it is within your use case and it's forcing a choice between irons and optic, my choice was to go with the irons.

...or I could have someone drill and tap my receiver so I can install an Aridus CROM on there and get a useful rear that works with my rifle-sighted front and have the optic in between. That setup works really well, too.

[awp_101]

I've not run one with no rear sight myself, but I'd theorize you're going to be in the same sort of problem as the bead. Without some sort of rear reference it's tough to know how well you're aligned on target.

Thanks, I kept coming up with the same logic but I’ve never tried it to know.

...or I could have someone drill and tap my receiver so I can install an Aridus CROM on there and get a useful rear that works with my rifle-sighted front and have the optic in between. That setup works really well, too.

About an hour after posting, I said screw it and ordered a CROM. My latest 870 is factory d&t with a rifle sight barrel (front and rear sights so a police model maybe?). I’ll mount the CROM there and swap the sighted barrel to the non-d&t 870. The bead barrel will get an XS or Wilson front sight and installed on the CROM’ed 870.

I’m willing to play Legos if it means only ordering a couple of parts I can install myself instead of budgeting for someone else to do it, being on their time schedule and still end up with something similar.