jaybar
Member
A fellow brought me a barrel from a Benelli Super Black Eagle. The choke tube is stuck in the barrel. He claims it is a Benelli factory tube, modified constriction, marked for steel shot. He has shot a lot of rounds (thousands) of steel shot over the last 4 or 5 years and has never tried to remove the tube until last week. He broke the Benelli wrench and a Remington choke wrench while trying to remove the tube and in the process rounded over all four of the indexing slots. He asked if I could remove it.
I have one of the "stuck tube removers" that Brownells sells. It has a hardened steel, knurled expanding section that you insert into the tube, tighten to grasp the interior of the tube and a "T" handle to use while unscrewing the choke tube. Brownells refers to the tool as the "last resort" tool because it may be your only option left. Well, they may be right! I couldn't budge the tube. I soaked the tube end of the barrel in Kroil for 24 hours - still no luck. Tried heat - no movement. Soaked it again in Kroil still no luck. The tube absolutely refuses to move. I am applying a lot of torque to the tool by hand. So much so that the knurled surface will slip and actually shave metal from the inside of the choke tube.
Anybody have any ideas or tricks for salvaging the barrel. New barrels for the SBE are awfully expensive and since the barrel is only 24" I want to avoid cutting back the muzzle and rethreading for a new tube.
I have one of the "stuck tube removers" that Brownells sells. It has a hardened steel, knurled expanding section that you insert into the tube, tighten to grasp the interior of the tube and a "T" handle to use while unscrewing the choke tube. Brownells refers to the tool as the "last resort" tool because it may be your only option left. Well, they may be right! I couldn't budge the tube. I soaked the tube end of the barrel in Kroil for 24 hours - still no luck. Tried heat - no movement. Soaked it again in Kroil still no luck. The tube absolutely refuses to move. I am applying a lot of torque to the tool by hand. So much so that the knurled surface will slip and actually shave metal from the inside of the choke tube.
Anybody have any ideas or tricks for salvaging the barrel. New barrels for the SBE are awfully expensive and since the barrel is only 24" I want to avoid cutting back the muzzle and rethreading for a new tube.
What you really want to do is cause the tube to shrink relative to the barrel. So the ideas of heat and cold are hitting really close to the mark ... but I think that the hot ticket (no pun intended) will be to heat the barrel and tube and get the brownells tool really cold (dry ice, nitrogen, whatever chills your tool) then when you stick the tool into the tube and engage it, it will cool the tube first and you will have some (probably very brief) period of DIFFERENTIAL thermal contraction ... the key here is differential. If you cool the whole mess or heat the whole mess, then the whole mess grows or shrinks together and the only thing that will help is a different coefficient of thermal expansion. If the metals are really different (303 stainless and 4140 for example ... or steel and aluminum) then just heating or cooling will help, but if they are both a carbon steel, then the coefficients will likely be VERY close and they will grow and shrink together ... not causing anything to let loose. With differential cooling you should be able to get substantial clearance to show up ... but it will be temporary, so that's why I suggest having the tool be the source of cold ... otherwise you will likely lose the advantage before you can get the tool inserted.
