BrobeeBiter
Member
Hello everyone!
A Remington 870 was my first gun ever, many many many moons ago when I was in my 20's. I loved that gun bigtime, and pretty much believed it could do anything and proceeded to spend the next 10 years manically trying to explore it's limits.
As an aside, that journey had me do a serious amount of bear and deer hunting with my 870, as well as the comprehensive shotgun ballistic gelatin tests (and terminal ballistic case studies on deer and bear) that have since faded into the annals of the internet afterworld, in a life that seems like it's long since gone.
My next gun was an 11-87 police with an 18.5 inch barrel that ha a special place in my heart as it was my first semi auto. I lived it almost as much as that old 870 that got me started in the whole realm of the shooting sports.
But then as I progressed through my 30's my interest in the shotgun faded as I discovered centerfire rifles. I proceeded to have a decade long love affair with the .223, .308, and 30-06, and wound up selling pretty much all of my shotguns and forgetting about how much fun they had been.
Now I'm moving through my early 40's, and my interest in semi auto centerfire rifles seems to be waning; replaced with a growing interest in bolt action guns of all things.
Then it happened....I was walking through one of the local gun stores and there it was hanging on the rack - a brand new, yet oldschool styled Remington 11-87 Sportsman. It seems this year that all the new 11-87s are also of a newer style....the stock furniture has been "upgraded" and I've been secretly gagging when I see them as they seem ugly to me. I think this is another sign that I am getting older!! So seeing the new/unfired old styled 11-87 somehow cast this big wave of nostalgia over me and I knew I had to have it! Right beside it was a brand new Remington 870 Police Marine Magnum (Rifle Sights on a Marine Magnum) as well as a regular Marine Magnum, so I bought ALL THREE! Needless to say, I had some explaining to do to the wife when I got home...
HELLO 12 GAUGE!
Anyway....my plan for the 11-87 was to try and get as close to my old 11-87 police as I could. I have a close shooting buddy who runs a well equipped CNC machine shop, and while paying him a visit one afternoon we chucked the 11-87 up on one of his older manual lathes and parted it off at 18.6 inches (below that gets us into legal trouble up here in Canada). He put a beautiful rounded crown on it, and we turned back the vented rib to the closes attachment point.
Then we leveled it up in the vice of one of his manual mills, dialed in the center of the rib, and proceeded to drill and tap the small hole for a new bead I had ordered from Brownells. When I got the gun home I applied a bit of cold-blue to the muzzle and rib; the result looked like it could have come from the Remington Factory!
When I got it home, I was disappointed to discover that the shell lifter was misformed, being too long to be able to properly clear the shell latch when feeding shells into the mag tube. 5 minutes on my belt sander took care of that, and she was soon manually cycling ammo no-problemo...woohoo!
I was PUMPED!
Off to the range I went, where I was somewhat downcast to discover that the gas system would not cycle properly with anything other than full power slug and buckshot. This was not un-expected though, as all my reading here served as ample warning. Rifling around my gun room, I found some replacement brownells o-rings, so I added another o-ring to the system and went back to the range. There was minor improvement, as the gun would now cycle high brass upland loads, but not the heavy field loads I was hoping for. Back to the shop I went, and we opened up the gas ports to 0.125. This, in combination with the extra o-ring, got the gun to the point that it would just cycle the 3.25 DRAM heavy field loads, but nothing lighter. By now I was pumped, as the heavy field loads are almost as cheap as the cheap skeet loads, and the gun still seemed to eat the more powerful buck and slug without banging around or beating itself up too much.
I drilled out the mag tube tabs, and installed a 2 round extension with a permanent 1 round plug, and also replaced the plastic follower with one from Vang Comp.
She was ready to rumble:
WOOHOO!
I've had it out at my acreage the past couple weekends...and have been having a TOTAL gas with it! It's brought me back to my initial love for the shotgun, and I think I'm going take it out for this year's deer hunting season. We bought a clay thrower, and after one weekend of that my wife made me go out and get her a 20 gauge 870, as she was having a riot too!
Then this past weekend my wife and I took it out and set up a short jungle-lane on our recreational property. We then filmed a short video tribute to Hickok45....he's made me smile more than once! Just for laughs, here it is... Sorry for all the Cheezie-ness. We had a couple of professionally licensed pyrotechnician come too, and they sure helped spice up the ending. All in all, despite more mosquitos than I've ever seen in my life, everyone had a blast and can't wait to go again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A62awEKK-pg&feature=youtu.be
I don't think he's seen it yet and I'm not sure how to bring it to his attention but oh well, I had a riot making it.
I sold some of my other guns, and today I got a call from the local shop to let me know that my new browning A5 had arrived! I picked it up this evening, and think I might give it the same treatment as my 11-87. The gunshop owners think I am nuts to consider doing this to a brand new browning, but some of those old pics on the internet of the short A5s have me kinda leaning that way.....
Stay tuned....if it turns out ok and if there is any interest, I'll do up a post for it too!
Cheers, and thanks for reading!
Brobee
ps: Glad to be back playing with the 12gauge!
A Remington 870 was my first gun ever, many many many moons ago when I was in my 20's. I loved that gun bigtime, and pretty much believed it could do anything and proceeded to spend the next 10 years manically trying to explore it's limits.
As an aside, that journey had me do a serious amount of bear and deer hunting with my 870, as well as the comprehensive shotgun ballistic gelatin tests (and terminal ballistic case studies on deer and bear) that have since faded into the annals of the internet afterworld, in a life that seems like it's long since gone.
My next gun was an 11-87 police with an 18.5 inch barrel that ha a special place in my heart as it was my first semi auto. I lived it almost as much as that old 870 that got me started in the whole realm of the shooting sports.
But then as I progressed through my 30's my interest in the shotgun faded as I discovered centerfire rifles. I proceeded to have a decade long love affair with the .223, .308, and 30-06, and wound up selling pretty much all of my shotguns and forgetting about how much fun they had been.
Now I'm moving through my early 40's, and my interest in semi auto centerfire rifles seems to be waning; replaced with a growing interest in bolt action guns of all things.
Then it happened....I was walking through one of the local gun stores and there it was hanging on the rack - a brand new, yet oldschool styled Remington 11-87 Sportsman. It seems this year that all the new 11-87s are also of a newer style....the stock furniture has been "upgraded" and I've been secretly gagging when I see them as they seem ugly to me. I think this is another sign that I am getting older!! So seeing the new/unfired old styled 11-87 somehow cast this big wave of nostalgia over me and I knew I had to have it! Right beside it was a brand new Remington 870 Police Marine Magnum (Rifle Sights on a Marine Magnum) as well as a regular Marine Magnum, so I bought ALL THREE! Needless to say, I had some explaining to do to the wife when I got home...
HELLO 12 GAUGE!
Anyway....my plan for the 11-87 was to try and get as close to my old 11-87 police as I could. I have a close shooting buddy who runs a well equipped CNC machine shop, and while paying him a visit one afternoon we chucked the 11-87 up on one of his older manual lathes and parted it off at 18.6 inches (below that gets us into legal trouble up here in Canada). He put a beautiful rounded crown on it, and we turned back the vented rib to the closes attachment point.
Then we leveled it up in the vice of one of his manual mills, dialed in the center of the rib, and proceeded to drill and tap the small hole for a new bead I had ordered from Brownells. When I got the gun home I applied a bit of cold-blue to the muzzle and rib; the result looked like it could have come from the Remington Factory!
When I got it home, I was disappointed to discover that the shell lifter was misformed, being too long to be able to properly clear the shell latch when feeding shells into the mag tube. 5 minutes on my belt sander took care of that, and she was soon manually cycling ammo no-problemo...woohoo!
I was PUMPED!
Off to the range I went, where I was somewhat downcast to discover that the gas system would not cycle properly with anything other than full power slug and buckshot. This was not un-expected though, as all my reading here served as ample warning. Rifling around my gun room, I found some replacement brownells o-rings, so I added another o-ring to the system and went back to the range. There was minor improvement, as the gun would now cycle high brass upland loads, but not the heavy field loads I was hoping for. Back to the shop I went, and we opened up the gas ports to 0.125. This, in combination with the extra o-ring, got the gun to the point that it would just cycle the 3.25 DRAM heavy field loads, but nothing lighter. By now I was pumped, as the heavy field loads are almost as cheap as the cheap skeet loads, and the gun still seemed to eat the more powerful buck and slug without banging around or beating itself up too much.
I drilled out the mag tube tabs, and installed a 2 round extension with a permanent 1 round plug
, and also replaced the plastic follower with one from Vang Comp.She was ready to rumble:
WOOHOO!
I've had it out at my acreage the past couple weekends...and have been having a TOTAL gas with it! It's brought me back to my initial love for the shotgun, and I think I'm going take it out for this year's deer hunting season. We bought a clay thrower, and after one weekend of that my wife made me go out and get her a 20 gauge 870, as she was having a riot too!
Then this past weekend my wife and I took it out and set up a short jungle-lane on our recreational property. We then filmed a short video tribute to Hickok45....he's made me smile more than once! Just for laughs, here it is...
Sorry for all the Cheezie-ness. We had a couple of professionally licensed pyrotechnician come too, and they sure helped spice up the ending. All in all, despite more mosquitos than I've ever seen in my life, everyone had a blast and can't wait to go again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A62awEKK-pg&feature=youtu.be
I don't think he's seen it yet and I'm not sure how to bring it to his attention but oh well, I had a riot making it.
I sold some of my other guns, and today I got a call from the local shop to let me know that my new browning A5 had arrived! I picked it up this evening, and think I might give it the same treatment as my 11-87. The gunshop owners think I am nuts to consider doing this to a brand new browning, but some of those old pics on the internet of the short A5s have me kinda leaning that way.....
Stay tuned....if it turns out ok and if there is any interest, I'll do up a post for it too!
Cheers, and thanks for reading!
Brobee
ps: Glad to be back playing with the 12gauge!
