Advice

Shotgun Buyer’s Guide: How to Choose Your First Shotgun, Types Explained

Why shotgun? Versatile, powerful, easy to use.

When you make the decision to purchase a firearm, you have a lot of choices available. Mainly, you need to think about what you’re going to use the firearm for and what type of firearm would best suit your needs for this. Most people who purchase firearms will want to go hunting, target shooting, competitive shooting, or just keep it around for home defense. Well, there is one type of firearm, in particular, that can accommodate all three of these purposes. This would be the shotgun. The great thing about a shotgun is that it is easy for anyone to use, even people who have little to no experience with firearms. And because shotguns are so powerful, you don’t have to be a perfect shot to hit your target. But if you are able to aim accurately, you can be sure that your target will be destroyed with one shot.

Fixing Remington 870 Failure to Extract Problem

There is another difficult to identify problem of the Remington 870. Sometimes, it is very difficult to to pull the forend after the shot. You need to pull it several times to extract the fired shotshell from the chamber. Polishing a chamber helps but it still can happen.

Fixing Remington 870 Failure to Feed Problem

Failure to feed is a pretty rare problem which is also difficult to identify. I didn’t understand what happened first times when I experienced it. You feel that you hit something when you push forend forward trying to feed another round and when you check what happened you see a shotshell on a carrier and everything looks normal.

What is Remington 870 Flexitab System, Parts, Differences, Identification

The original Remington 870 shotgun was designed in a way that allowed the shotshell to get jammed between the carrier and the bolt. If you tried to remove the shell, it would be a rather difficult process. If you ask anyone who used Remington 870 shotguns before the 1980s, they’ll tell you that it required a user to disassemble the shotgun. Don’t do what a lot of gun owners do and just slam your shotgun onto a hard surface because that will damage the action bars.

How to Find out if Remington Model 870 Shotgun has a Magnum Receiver?

You are probably familiar with how Remington 870 shotguns are made with different gauges. The most common gauge in the model 870 is the 12-gauge. This measures the diameter of the barrel. But what you may not realize is the length of the shells is also as critical to consider as their diameter. If you have 3 inches or 2 ¾ inches shells then you need a magnum receiver that can handle it. Of course, the barrel also has to be equipped to handle up to 3-inch long shells. If it is then you can fire them as long as you have a magnum receiver.

Correcting 4 Common Remington 870 Problems

There are several common problems of Remington 870 shotgun. They are well known but new owners may have problems diagnosing and fixing them.

So, I decided to list the most common problems and how to fix them. Remington 870 is a very good shotgun, you just need to understand how to use it.

Evolution of the Remington 870 breech bolt and slide assembly

Very interesting post by redgoat on Remington 870 Forum:

This is more of a “here’s what I’ve observed” post than a how-to or an open ended question.

While researching all of the parts involved in the “flexi-tab conversion” for an older Wingmaster I learned that there is more involved than just switching the shell carrier to the new flexi-tab one. As I understand now, there can be up to four parts involved. I’ve listed them below along with their corresponding parts diagram number

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