[troyboy94]

Okay, I recently just purchased a Remington 11-87 and my Grandpa told me if I take it trap shooting and shoot 4 or 5 boxes of shells out of it, the barrel will get very hot and split. I'm not planning on shooting this many boxes of shells out of it I was just wondering if he was telling me the truth or just blowing smoke. He said it happened to one of his Browning A-5's. True or False can the barrel split when it gets hot?

[earlthegoat2]

If you ran that on full auto for 5000 rounds I bet it wouldnt split.

Maybe bend. Get cherry red hot.

But split.....

no

[rbernie]

Sounds like Grandpa had a problem 'back when' and is simply carrying that forward. I wouldn't argue with him about it, but no - it's not an issue. I've put far more through my shotguns (11/87 and Auto5 included) than 4-5 boxes at a time, and never had any issues.

[Rshooter]

Wasn't shooting trap and was using a 870 but I can say for sure it will not split after four or five boxes.

[batex]

When I go to the gun club and shoot 5-stand and trap, I rarely shoot less than 5 or 6 boxes of shells. Of course, there are breaks during the shooting, but shooting 4 or 5 boxes of shells, even fairly quickly, will not have any negative effect on your gun in my opinion. Now, maybe if you shot 4 or 5 hundred as rapidly as you can, you might get some ill effect, but it would have to be very intentional abuse of a nice shotgun. Just my .02.

[John828]

False

[Fred Fuller]

You're going to load the thing by hand, and shoot called birds, right?

Not gonna happen... Gramps might have had a squib load that stiuck a wad in his barrel and fired another round on top of it, but it wasn't because of heat that his barrel split.

lpl

[dom1104]

grandpa at that point probably had his FIRST heart attack :)

I think lee Lapin is right in his theory.

[RetiredLawman]

I am a great grandpa. Never heard of such! I've shot a lot of older guns, much older than I am. No split barrels even on a hot dove hunt where the empties are flying.

[rcmodel]

You can't reload a shotgun fast enough to get the barrel hot enough to hurt it.
It cools down a little while you are stuffing more shells in it.

It would have to get hot enough to set fire to the stock before it would even be remotely close to changing the heat treatment of the steel.

Split barrels on modern shotguns, although extremely rare, are the result of a bore obstruction.
Nothing more.

rc