Gunsmithing on a 24V?

[hal9000]

Evening all.
I recently acquired a sad old 24V that some previous owner lost a number of key parts for... Not complaining about that. It allowed me to get the rifle for just about nothing and save it from the trash heap.

I've already ordered most of the parts I need, (but if anybody has a cast trigger guard or forestock wood and/or springbar they want to get rid of, please let me know), and now I'm in the process of trying to figure out what gunsmithing I need to do.

I'm going to cut the barrels down to 20" for compactness, and thread the shotgun barrel for a choke adapter. Doing this the way I want (on my lathe) will involve removing at least one of the barrels from the breech block. The barrels appear to just be pressed and pinned into the block, but before I try to pull one of the barrels I'd like to find out if there's an accepted process or if anybody has done it before. it would be a shame to booger things up from lack of knowledge.

Thanks all.

[Westcliffe01]

I've owned a model 24. I would speculate that removing the barrels is likely to ruin them. They are both quite thin wall barrels. You would literally be better off sawing them and then re-finishing the ends in something like a milling machine. The 2 barrels are tied together somewhere in front and that is a structural connection. I would check to be sure there is enough material to allow for a choke. The 20ga barrel I had, I'm pretty sure there was too litte material to allow for a choke.

On mine the latch that held the action closed didn't have near enough engagement. I had to remove a LOT of material to get it to latch properly.. I speculated that if I had fired the 20ga barrel prior to fixing the latch I might have been wearing the shell in the back of my head...

[hal9000]

Thanks for the response... There have been many iterations of the model 24. The V model has a removable barrel band at the front instead of being soldered like other models, and no braze/solder to hold the barrels into the breech block. Also, it has a very beefy breech block (which surrounds the rifle barrel completely) compared to other model 24's

Using a mill to refinish the barrels is another choice but presents two problems. First, I don't have a vertical mill, just a little horizontal unit. Second, it doesn't address the shotgun choke issue.

In terms of the choke, I'm not talking about threading for a standard choke, I'm talking about adding a choke adapter. The adapter would be constructed of slightly larger OD pipe which can be internally threaded for a standard choke, then threaded onto the barrel via a set of fine shallow threads (internal on the adapter, external on the barrel). The barrel band would but up against the rear of the adapter to make the change in diameter less noticeable. It's a fair amount of work but worth it to have swappable chokes instead of either a fixed, or cylinder bore.

If the barrels can't be removed, then I'll have to solder the adapter on. Not the end of the world, but not my first choice either.

[blackhorse]

For the shot gun barrel you might grt a small cycender hone and hone it out a bit. mike it before cutting and hone it to where it should be. when you cut the barrel it will shoot very "loose" because the barrel is tighter. ie, a looser barrel has a tighter pattern. It has to do with gas leaking around the shot and pushing it together tighter and surrounding the shot as it leaves the barrel. honing the barrel is called swaging it.
good luck , should be pretty cool little gun when your finnished.
walt