Refinishing and relining an old shotgun

[XTR]

A long time ago I got 2 shotguns that were my grandfathers. Both are side by side 12ga

One is an LC Smith that when I was 16 or 17 (back in the 70s) I refinished, so any collectors value is gone.

The other is a Ranger that I believe was bought from Sears, probably in the 30s or earlier.


By the time I got them they had been neglected (GF's second wife) and the barrels were obviously pitted.

I'd like to have both restored and made shootable. The wood refinish I can do, and I could rust blue them, but they both need to be bored and sleeved, so while that's happening I'd just as soon get them blued.

Any recommendations for someone to do this?

 

[KMart]

Give Briley a call. They do all sorts of unusual things. If they can't do the work, maybe they can send you in the right direction

 

[NewLiberty]

Lined barrels are going to make real klunkers out of them. I'd shoot them with the pits.

 

[ebb]

I found a site like this one but centered around shotguns, called Shotgun World. One of the shotgun smiths that looked as if he knew his stuff was a guy Mike Orlen. I would ask this question over there.

 

[XTR]

thanks

 

[akajun]

I had an old Winchester Model 97 that had a badly pitted bore from the black powder/corrosive ammo days, it really fouled badly when shot with plastic wad shells.
First thing I did was to plug both barrels and filled them with Ospho, a phosphoric acid primer, overnight then pouring it out in the morning. The made a dramatic improvement in the appearance of the bore, as it only attacks rust, but the bore still fouled. Next I purchased a back bore reamer, the smallest one available .730, and set the barrel up in my lathe and reamed it out. The machine I had at the time did not have flood coolant, so I would oil it up, stop, brush out chips, go another few inches, repeat. It took about an hour and still only removed about 10% of the visible pits. Well I figured I might as well go all out and bought a .735 reamer, which completely cleaned the pits out of the bore. A quick follow up with a forcing cone reamer, choke reamer, and a bore hone produced a beautiful bore medium choke.
If you decide to go this route, there are a few things to consider. ON you will need to measure the OD of your barrel along its complete length, then measure the ID as well. If you barrel will be too thin, don't do it. The back bore reamers are tapered, so I made a stop on the reamer extension to where the taper would eat into the beginnings of the choke taper. I then made calculations to open up the choke to get the constriction I needed relative to the new bore ID. At the time, I did not have screw in choke tooling, or I would have done that