Thinking of threading my 20" 870 barrel

[John A.]

The tools came in this mornings mail.



Reaming the barrel was the hardest and most time consuming part. You could only ream maybe 15 or 20 seconds before you'd have to stop and clean the tool and barrel.



Eventually, the reamer would bottom out.



Then to thread it. Which is the easy part and only took 3-5 minutes.

Sorry the camera wouldn't focus inside of the barrel, but you should get the point.



Flush fit choke is just a hair under flush, but close enough. Should be alright as long as I don't pile drive the nose of the gun into boulders or whatever.



Extended chokes seat with no problem at all. Here is my Kicks' Gobblin' Thunder choke that I like so much.



And a quick shot through the bore of the gobblin' thunder where you can see the extra constriction. Everything is clean, straight, and should work just fine now.





I won't be able to post any of the target/patterns until probably this weekend. I plan to do a couple shots of buckshot, slugs, and a few of my hunting loads with the tighter chokes to see what this barrel with the new chokes will do now.

[John A.]

Unsurprisingly, the shotguns still shot slugs and buckshot well with an improved cylinder choke.

But they also shot Remington STS #6 reloaded low brass well now too using the Kicks Gobblin' Thunder turkey choke. I could probably play with chokes and tweak my handloads a little to get even better performance, but I think all of us would agree there is no way a cylinder choke shotgun would pattern birdshot this well at 20 yards.

[safetyfast]

Nice work!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[efriedrich]

Nice work! So if a barrel is lets say a fixed full choke does that mean only the end of the barrel has restriction and not the entire barrel. For example if you had two fixed choked Remington barrels and one was cylinder and the other was full choke the only difference would be the last 3-4 inches of the barrel which is where the fixed constriction is?

[John A.]

Far as I know, it's just toward the muzzle, though that is a question I don't recall ever being asked before. I don't have any specialized tools that would read measurements way down in a barrel to say for sure, but the choke usually does refer to the diameter of the muzzle. And cutting a barrel shorter always has turned it into an open choke barrel.

In this case, it was a cylinder/open choke, and I had to ream out for the screw in choke. Which reduces the diameter at the muzzle. And most other factory barrel with thread-in choke are also fairly large in the main bore and only constrict at the choke. That's why it's shooting birdshot so much better now.

[John A.]

Nice work!

Thank you. It takes a leap of faith when you first start reaming and cutting into your barrel

But the tools are well made and work the way they're supposed to.

I suggest getting all of the shim sizes so you can fit to your specific barrel. I had to use a different shim for each of the 2 barrels. Both were just a little different inside diameter. I'm sure that made a huge difference in how it turned out. If your shim would've been sloppy, I have no doubt that the threading and concentricity would've been sloppy too.

But there's no going back after you get started.

I didn't make a video, but this one shows the steps and some of the work involved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKtHk_tXuoI

[efriedrich]

I found this on line, pretty good article.
https://www.gun-tests.com/special_repo ... 3zskxFx9A

[John A.]

Nice article. I suppose that answered your question.

[Conor1965]

Hi, anyone know anyone in the UK that can thread a Winchoke thread in my barrel. I want to cut down my Winchester shotgun barrel and have it retreaded with the original Winchoke thread. Teague only thread barrels with their own bespoke thin wall choke thread, which will mean I need to purchase all new chokes. Earlier this year I purchased a few Teague chokes that are cut with a Winchoke thread, hence the wish to stay with the Winchoke thread if I can.
Any ideas? I would be grateful for any help.
Regards