Repair or don't repair? M6 Scout Project Rifle (renamed)

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Glock4ever

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I picked up an M6 Scout (22/410) with a bubba'd barrel in a trade. Overall I am pretty happy with this little pack rifle but I do want some wise advice... The rifle is in excellent shape but the original owner was unhappy with the choke on the 410 and decided to do a "do-it-yourself" improvement to the 410 by drilling out the choke. The only problem is that he left the drilled out area (~6" of bore at the muzzle) really rough... The 22 barrel is pristine. So the question I have is should I drop some coin and have the bore polished/honed or leave it as is? I am not interested in slagging the guy so please save the comments, I am just looking to see what you guys think I should do. Here are some pics:

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Everything else about this gun seems pretty darn good - I am thinking if I stick to birdshot it shouldn't be too bad but I do think that this shotgun may have some issues patterning consistently. What do you guys think?
 
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"...don't imagine an M6 is worth too much..." More than you'd think given the crappy triggers. Some shops and other forum 'for sale' pages list 'em at $400 plus. Discontinued, of course.
Definitely shoot it first. Suspect the previous owner wrecked it to shoot slugs.
 
options

It depends upon how much money you want to put into it, and what you are going to do with it afterwards.

If you are a bit handy, you could split a wooden dowel, attach some strips of emery paper into the slit, chuck it into a drill, and carefully and slowly polish the affected area.

I would have enough length on the dowel so that you could put it into the barrel from the Rear, so that there is more support.

Another option, if you have enough thickness in the barrel is a jug choke. In this type of choke, the bore is relieved more further from the muzzle, and then left alone close to the muzzle. This works well with shotgun barrels that have been cut off, and can give up to a modified choke.

The best thing to do is actually fire it, using different sizes of shot, on a large sheet of paper. Then, you know what you have, and what you might possibly have to do.

Good Luck.
.
 
I'd take it out and shoot it first to see how it patterns. Why anyone would want to open up the pattern on a .410 is beyond me. Somebody must have fed him the old you can't shoot slugs out of a full choke line and he swallowed. Damn you Bubba, wrecked a much sought after gun.
 
Well I found a gunsmith who is going to look at it. Hopefully she will be good to go... the quote for the work isn't too much either so hopefully for the nominal price of 65 bucks, the smith can make this right...
 
Some more help required.... I got the rifle back from the gunsmith and he did an excellent job of cleaning up the rough bore. There are still some minor tooling marks but he said that it was the best he could do. It looks really good so no complaints on the muzzle end. As I was cleaning the rifle I did notice that the 22 barrel didn't look right -- it actually looked warped (like a minor bend upwards - it wasn't heavily noticeable but I could definitely see it), it finally dawned on me that the barrel was bending under the pressure of the paracord wrap - I confirmed it by measuring the distance between the two barrels with my measuring gauge. I was absolutely stunned as I didn't know how the previous owner missed such an obvious thing when cleaning the barrel. I imagine that either 1 of 2 things happened:

1.) He didn't notice that the barrel was bent when firing as groups were never spectacular to begin with; or

2.) He was shooting at such close range it didn't matter that the barrel was bending.

I have yet to shoot this piece but I can't imagine that a bent barrel will lead to better accuracy. So I removed the wrap, as I was unwinding the wrap, I could hear a mild creaking noise at certain points during the unwrap so it was clear that the barrel was under pressure. I was worried that the bent barrel would be permanent; however, after removing the wrap - I could see that barrel was straight from the bore and I measure the spacing between the two barrels again and it was even from muzzle to breech. I was pretty relieved by that...

Now the latest drama I have found with this combo gun is that there is very heavy leading at the forcing cone of the shotgun barrel. I should have asked the smith to polish/remove it while it was there but I didn't notice it until I got it back yesterday. I spent last night using JB Bore Paste and Remington bore cleaner trying to remove it but still no joy - it looks like it is coming out but it is very very slow going. Does anybody have any suggestions for this problem? Is it perhaps not lead but wad residue? It is so bad that there is like a 1mm high lump at the 3 O'Clock position and I want it all out.

I do have to say that I am having great fun with this particular project. I think the previous owner bought this M6 and was very happy with it until he bubba'd it up. He gave it to me for literally nothing (sweeten the pot on a rifle trade) but if I can fix everything up I think this piece will be a great little truck gun. I am going to head over to the gun shop to see if I can get a single weaver base for it as I would like mount a Burris Fastfire or some other handgun red dot.... Anyone do this to their M6 Scout?

Some updated pics:

New 6" of bore is now pretty clean (there are still some minor rings but it should be good to go for a shotgun) The smith says that is measures out as a true cylinder bore:

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Unwrapped rifle:

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Got some 3" shells and Velocitors in the ammo carried:

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Yowzers! Just a barrel of fun, this one!

What did the smith do to fix up the barrel? Just clean it up and make it pretty again, or did he put a sleeve in? I like the screw in choke idea, but wonder at the availability of same. And the price.


Sounds like it's going to be a good deal, even if it takes some time and effort to manifest.

If you feel the need to place any wrapping around the barrel in future, a tip that may be worth remembering, is that you can always fill the gap to prevent this movement. Crosman made several airgun models with quite thin barrels, that had the gap between the barrel and main body tube filled with a plastic strip to prevent this deflection when being gripped, as well as to clean it up visually. I'm pretty sure you could round up something useful that would work for this. 'Course, not horsing the wrap up tight would be quite a start.

Cheers
Trev
 
Trev: I have no idea what the smith did - I am not overly mechanically inclined - so I imagine he polished it up with whatever tools he us normally uses to hone shotgun bores. He told me that, in his opinion, there wasn't enough meat left on the barrel to install a choke system - which is fine as it is a 410 which is pretty limited in range because, IMO, there isn't enough pellets to make a good pattern further out. I think that opening up the choke only lost a few yards off the pattern but I will need to confirm it when I go out. I asked if a sleeve was possible but he said that the cost would be prohibitive and recommended sourcing a new shotgun barrel from perhaps Springfield. I haven't tried that route yet as I think it may be expensive and if it only gets me 5 extra yards with the 410. As well from all the research I have done - it may be better to leave it cylinder bore for shooting slugs. Apparently the original factory choke was a Full Choke and a few fellows have said that this has led to poor accuracy and/or higher pressures. I personally don't know if this is true but I am willing to go with the flow. I think the last owner shot a great number of slugs through it because he did go to the effort of opening up the choke and the amount of leading can't be from shooting bird shot.... or can it?

I am definitely not going to wrap it again (even with a spacer) I think that the wrap may heavily influence the barrel harmonics, esp if it cools and heats up from shooting. Maybe I am being overly fussy for a survival gun but I don't see myself unwrapping paracord in the field to use and seeing the warping action happening was a major turn off. It was a ##### to unwrap the job that the previous owner did.
 
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