cutting down barrel and adding choke?

Status
Not open for further replies.

lasinvegas

Member
Joined
Mar 19, 2009
Messages
19
I have an old stevens 67 with a 28" barrel. Before I find a smith to talk to, would it be possible to cut it down to around a 20" and add in a removable choke setup?

Thinking about making this my turkey gun and don't want to have to swing the full length around in the woods.
 
yes, you will need a certain wall thickness to add chokes. Its hard to know without cutting the barrel first. Find a smith who does just this for a living.
 
The model 67 has a fairly thick barrel wall and I would not think it to be a problem at all.

Do you realy want to put $100 + into a Model 67 ? If so, I don't see any technical issues.
 
Interchangeable choke tubes are just as useful on a short barreled gun as a long barreled gun. The OP said he wanted it to turkey hunt with. Extra full choke tubes come in handy for that.

My 21" Remington turkey barrel will accept any tube. Works grreat for turkey hunting with the turkey tube, serves HD duty with a skeet tube, and makes a fine rabbit/quail gun for the thick stuff with a modified or IC tube.
 
Dropping $100 on a gun I like to make it what I want is much cheaper than replacing it with a new gun. I am the guy that has hunted quail with the same model 12 in 20 since I was 14 because the gun just feels right when it comes to my shoulder. I like the model 67 for turkey, just want to make it work better for me.
 
As our family gunsmith (may he rest in peace) used to say, with his trademarked Snidely Whiplash evil grin, "Any project is feasible if properly funded."

So yes, it can almost certainly be done, and a pretty wide variety of shops can handle the work well. Even if the barrel is a bit too thin for certain current choke tube systems, there may be a thin-wall choke tube system that will work in it.

Far as I know your gun is a fixed barrel design, which may complicate things a bit. That means you'll have to leave the whole gun to get it worked on and can't just drop off or even mail in the detached barrel, as I've done with several barrels in which I wanted to get choke tubes installed. And it may also mean the shop will have to unscrew the barrel from the receiver to do the work, and then reinstall it after it's shortened and threaded. That complicates things, which might make it cost more, and opens doors for possible bigger problems like a torqued receiver if the shop doesn't do everything right.

I sincerely hope you get what you want out of the process, and the gun runs forever... if you have a gun that fits and you're wise enough to know it, you're already luckier than the average shotgunner.

lpl
 
Why would you want to add removable chokes to a gun with a 20" barrel?

I've never shot clays, or hunted with shotguns before, the only shotgun I have is a Rem 870 Tactical and it came standard with a threaded barrel and a flash hider. I really don't know how necessary this is or if it's just for the "tacticool" factor, but idunno, that's just one example of a threaded barrel on a short-barrel shotty.
 
cutting the barrel down to the 20" I want will basically turn it into a piece of pipe. Adding the choke will allow me to get my patterning back to an acceptable level to drop a turkey. Considering I only took turkey with my recurve the last couple of years I am trying to go through a lot of trouble to get back behind the gun.

Talked to a local smith that was recommended today and he said no problem on the 67 due to it having a thicker barrel throughout than a lot of the newer guns. Going to run me $75 labor and the cost of my choke setup.
 
Why would you want to add removable chokes to a gun with a 20" barrel?

Because for a long time the only short factory barrels available were CYL bore riot gun barrels of 18- 20" and having some choke is useful for a lot of situations. I had my first 18" barrel fitted with choke tubes back around 1996 or so, by a company called Patternmaster (they lengthened the forcing cone too), because I wanted to see how one of their choke tubes with 3" magnum premium 000 buckshot loads would do at 100 yards (about 30 - 40% of pellets on a military E type silhouette, as it turned out). Not long after that I discovered that the then-produced Texas version of Estate SWAT 00 buckshot (not the same load as offered today since ATK bought Estate) would produce 3" patterns at 25 yards out of an ordinary MOD RemChoke tube in that same barrel. We were shooting a lot of that load in 3-gun matches at the time, mostly because it was cheap ($2.95 per 10 round box, retail) and no one who didn't get a look at the muzzle could figure out how that little ol' 870 was dumping steel targets way on out there with buckshot.

I had a couple more 870 riot gun barrels fitted for RemChokes and had the forcing cones extended over the years, just because it worked so well that it was fun to do. And then Federal and Hornady came up with buckshot loads in FliteControl wads, and really tight 25 yard patterns became possible out of a stock 18" CYL bore barrel.

And if you want to hunt turkeys, it's pretty much a necessity to have a choked barrel. If I had to settle on just one gun with just one barrel for a do-everything shotgun, it would be my (bought used) older model 870 Express Turkey with a 21" vent rib barrel with factory RemChokes and the original front Bradley bead replaced with a Tru-Dot tritium bead. That and a pocket full of choke tubes would do me.

lpl
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top