Shotgun rifling
- Thread starter ATOM
- Start date
actualy, HE IS.
your questions are :
1- can it be done? with money, you can do any stuff you want
2- do you recomend doing it? absolutely not.
brand new 870 rifled barrel is only 300$ at cabella. so what is the point?
on the other end, if you have money you dont have a clue what to do with, then you can do all kind of experimentations others already know it will not work and have lots of fun.(that's what our politicians do every day
) but if you want a money effective project, get the factory barrel and buy amo with the saved money and there have a lot more fun 
So...
What's the idea?
Ever do any shotshell reloading? One of the problems with shotshells is there are a bunch of different types, and not all the wads and shells will interchange.
One of the points that gets absolutely POUNDED upon, way more than in metallic cartridge reloading even, is to follow the recipe exactly, and not stray. Aside from that the powder charges can rapidly and sometimes unpredictably go to dangerous levels, the next biggest problem is getting a decent seal on the wad to the case.
The powder burns fast, and is pretty much contained in the case, and maybe a very little bit down the breech end of the bore.
Given the number of third world types that have made their own guns out of black iron plumbing, pressures should be the least of your worries.
Getting the rifling to engage the wad, though, esp if you cut those grooves out of a already 12G bore size, the size that they were meant to essentially max out in anyways, is going to be an issue. I don't see the grooves as being terribly effective on the wad to start, if you cut them into an existing barrel, and the loosening of a sabot around a saboted slug, seems counter to the intended goals (loosening as the wad displaces outwards, saying that the wad actually does, in to the cut grooves.
One thought that popped up, in my head while considering this, is that the tech is out there to oven braze essentially strips wrapped around a mandrel, to appliqué the rifling to that barrel tube's inner surface.
Again with the expense, you need a large, temperature controlled oven, and more importantly, some tech background in a not very common manufacturing field, plus some likely expensive oven brazing compound and flux, then you have to make and hold the strips steady, etc., it rapidly spins out of control, time and costs wise.
Pretty much the only idea I see as worth experimenting with is to find someone that has the tooling to make up barrels of the bore you wish, and see if you can work out a means to mount them to your gun. I dunno if Remington did the same as Winchester but like as not the locking lug is threaded on to the barrel, while the front lug holding the loop or screw by which it is fastened to the gun, is silver soldered either directly on to the surface of the barrel or into a machined lug.
That is why until quite recently, Winchester had a bunch of their 1885 Single Shot rifles in the test and development lab, they were very easy to fit new barrels to, and if the project worked out, then they would work out any other relevant details. It was pretty easy to use these test hacks to do load development, cartridge testing, etc, and a bunch of them ended up in the Cody Museum in their storage.
Anyways, getting more accuracy out of a shotgun seems to be more about the loads than the barrels, as, according to one sight I was reading upon, the consistency of some factory slug loads over a chronograph is bloody abysmal, they were measuring 300-400 fps differences out of the same box of shells, they claim. I know more theory than hands on, in the accuracy game, but sameness, again and again, features pretty large in the means to accuracy, eh?
SO much easier to deal with a Muzzle Loader, as you can really do away with worrying about the need to fit the experiment to a standard size cartridge case.
Cheers
Trev
What's the idea?
Ever do any shotshell reloading? One of the problems with shotshells is there are a bunch of different types, and not all the wads and shells will interchange.
One of the points that gets absolutely POUNDED upon, way more than in metallic cartridge reloading even, is to follow the recipe exactly, and not stray. Aside from that the powder charges can rapidly and sometimes unpredictably go to dangerous levels, the next biggest problem is getting a decent seal on the wad to the case.
The powder burns fast, and is pretty much contained in the case, and maybe a very little bit down the breech end of the bore.
Given the number of third world types that have made their own guns out of black iron plumbing, pressures should be the least of your worries.
Getting the rifling to engage the wad, though, esp if you cut those grooves out of a already 12G bore size, the size that they were meant to essentially max out in anyways, is going to be an issue. I don't see the grooves as being terribly effective on the wad to start, if you cut them into an existing barrel, and the loosening of a sabot around a saboted slug, seems counter to the intended goals (loosening as the wad displaces outwards, saying that the wad actually does, in to the cut grooves.
One thought that popped up, in my head while considering this, is that the tech is out there to oven braze essentially strips wrapped around a mandrel, to appliqué the rifling to that barrel tube's inner surface.
Again with the expense, you need a large, temperature controlled oven, and more importantly, some tech background in a not very common manufacturing field, plus some likely expensive oven brazing compound and flux, then you have to make and hold the strips steady, etc., it rapidly spins out of control, time and costs wise.
Pretty much the only idea I see as worth experimenting with is to find someone that has the tooling to make up barrels of the bore you wish, and see if you can work out a means to mount them to your gun. I dunno if Remington did the same as Winchester but like as not the locking lug is threaded on to the barrel, while the front lug holding the loop or screw by which it is fastened to the gun, is silver soldered either directly on to the surface of the barrel or into a machined lug.
That is why until quite recently, Winchester had a bunch of their 1885 Single Shot rifles in the test and development lab, they were very easy to fit new barrels to, and if the project worked out, then they would work out any other relevant details. It was pretty easy to use these test hacks to do load development, cartridge testing, etc, and a bunch of them ended up in the Cody Museum in their storage.
Anyways, getting more accuracy out of a shotgun seems to be more about the loads than the barrels, as, according to one sight I was reading upon, the consistency of some factory slug loads over a chronograph is bloody abysmal, they were measuring 300-400 fps differences out of the same box of shells, they claim. I know more theory than hands on, in the accuracy game, but sameness, again and again, features pretty large in the means to accuracy, eh?
SO much easier to deal with a Muzzle Loader, as you can really do away with worrying about the need to fit the experiment to a standard size cartridge case.
Cheers
Trev
fat tony
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
A good Cdn. experimenter made up a custom choke with an old Snyder barrel. Not sure of the gauge or caliber - might have been twenty gauge gun.
Odd sort of rifling profile on the Snyder.
Odd sort of rifling profile on the Snyder.
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I was thinking of this a bit more, too: it's not like half the barrel wall would be grooved out to make the rifling, considering that 12 gauge minimum wall thickness for shot anyway is what 20 thou? But I do wonder whether you'd end up with an odd overbore size for your slug...unless that's part of the plan.
For ease I'm inclined to still think barrel liners. Maybe even 20 gauge into a 12 gauge.
For ease I'm inclined to still think barrel liners. Maybe even 20 gauge into a 12 gauge.
