I'm going to show my ignorance here but how else does one learn?
I'm guessing here that sleeving is done by going down a ga.? 12 to 16 or 16 to 20?
My ignorant question is can a 20 ga barrel, that's in bad shape, be bored a bit and sleved back to a 20 or is there so litle metal left that it wont work?
I'm figuring it wont work but..........?
Yes, it will work. There are several companies in England which bores out a little metal from the bore and chamber, then inserts a thin metal full length sleeve, retaining the same gauge. Obviously, there has to be a minimum thickness of the barrel to begin with, and the pits can be only so deep, but this is but one of the methods of sleeving. One of the British choke tube makers (Trulock?) has recently advertised in American shotgun magazines sleeving by this method.
Another popular method is in essence "monoblocking". The barrels are cut off at the forward end of the chambers, and the chambers length reamed out. The sleeved end of the new barrel(s) are then inserted into the chambers and secured. If done by a real expert (such as gun/barrel maker Kirk Merrington mentioned above), the join between the new barrels and the stub end of the old cannot be seen without very close inspection. Jim Haynes
