Bought an 8 1/2 to play with on the action range. I'm not a big fan to begin with but thought what the hell. Right out of the box it was difficult to feed shells into the mag tube. Once I got one in I couldn't get it out of the tube. Once I got it out of the tube I felt around inside and cut my finger on the Burr that was all the way around where the receiver and the mag tube butt together. I stripped the gun down and spent the next hour with a small toolmakers round file and a diamond dust impregnated rubber wheel on a dremel de burring the inside. After a few tries I finally got it feeding smoothly. By this time most of the guns finish was on my hands and you can just scratch it off with your fingernail. Since it seems to be functioning alright I whacked out the dimples with a socket, replaced the follower with an old remington steel one and the mag cap with a serated wingmaster one (these bite the barrel ring enough the they won't come loose). So now the gun will hold (and feed) 3 in tube. I have a Mesa Urbino stock laying around and may put that on. I removed the buttstock and the anchor stud in the receiver screwed out with the stock bolt. I put that back in with some loctite. Of course I absolutely HAD to try the pistol grip on it and it looks just plain nasty. The original plan was to register it as restricted since I only shoot at the range, but with all that was wrong with it I may just use the urbino stock until I am sure I am going to keep it. It's off to the range tomorrow to have a go and it has a date with the parkerising tank next week followed by teflon coating. One thing I am sure about is that if I was going to rely on this for bear country I would spend the money on a Dlask. When you have to re build a gun before you can put a shot thru it, it doesn't inspire confidence, although hopefully now all is well. We'll see





















































