doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Fitting orphaned shotgun barrels

OK may be a silly question. I have been seeing "orphaned" shotgun barrels showing up on the internet and curious about the reality in them being fitted to a gun.
Example, how probable would it be to fitting English made barrels to the same maker's gun of different serial number. How would barrels by American makers work to be fitted to another gun?
My friend said that the chances are very slim you could fit these barrels to my gun with a good proper fit, what say you?

What gun, which barrels

I have had some snap right on,
some needing a bit of fitting
and some, no hope

Mike

ANY had fitted gun is going to require hand fitting of barrels to it from another gun. The amount of work varies from gun to gun. Maker to maker depends on the given makers design and their manifacturing techniques.

Just because a set snaps right on does not mean they fit properly. There are several things that need to be carefully checked to determine whether they will function, and stay on face for an extended period of time. Amount of contact between the barrels and the breech face, amount of space between the barrel flats and the action flat, top lever position after closing, etc.

Fitting barrels is an extremely tedious job, not for the occasional hobbyist. It can be learned, but you should expect to pay "dues" to learn the procedure. If, and I mean if, you can find a gunsmith that has this mastered, don't bother with trying to learn yourself. Pay a master to do it. You will be way ahead. JMO, YMMV.

SRH

Pay your dues in the gun collecting world and you will succeed in your attempt to fit orphan barrels. Otherwise, you will fail miserably and waste much of your money spent on "extra barrels".

I have bought a lot of orphaned barrels over the years. Sometimes you get lucky and fitting them takes an hour or two. Sometimes it takes forever and sometimes you just can't get them to work. I had a set of Lefever barrels seven digits off in serial number that just would not go on at all. So it is a crap shoot and Stan is right if the gun is a decent gun just let someone else do it for you because you can screw them up such that they will never fit anything worth a darn.

I've got a set of 32" Fox barrels at a gunsmith having them fitted to a 30" Sterly Ejector gun, as we speak. They had been previously "fitted", and I use that term loosely, by a very well known doublegunsmith who screwed them up so badly that another well known Fox gunsmith really didn't want to mess with them. He said I'd be so upside down on them by the time he welded the hook and redid the job that he wouldn't advise it. This was a set of brand new Fox barrels that had never been fitted to a gun at the factory. Completed barrels, just never blued or fitted to an action. Was I sick when I saw how the first guy had botched the job? You could say that, yeah. Point?.................not everybody who hangs a GUNSMITH shingle out can fit barrels to a double, properly.

As eightbore mentioned, this is another way we "pay our dues", sadly.

SRH

and then there is the forend fit issue...ideally, orphan barrels will include the forend...

This discussion is relevant to my interests . . .

The A grade Fox I bought at Tulsa included an extra set of barrels that the seller said fit the gun (they really don't). I don't know what I'm ever going to do with them. I'm regretting not trying to negotiate a better price WITHOUT the extra barrels. Oh well, maybe I'll run into a Fox with a set of blown barrels.

Sell them. Usually any decent barrel set is worth at least a couple hundred to someone.