First, let me say I am no authority on Winchester solid ribs, but have observed and learned a lot by buying and selling quite a few over the years. I do believe at least at one time, the solid ribs on shotgun barrels were integral. If you look at how much metal had to be removed, you would think that it would be very costly but lets look at some other things Winchester did that I think was even more costly during production.
If you look at a the two-pin ventilated ribs, you will see that each dovetail is separately machined on the barrel by removing stock material as well as the rib itself being machined. It was then slid over the dovetails and held on by two pins through the middle dovetail. This went on through the mid 50's before a change was made to the 3-pin rib. To reduce costs, Winchester then soldered the posts on and slid an extruded rib over the posts. There were several different post styles during this change over.
Also, take a look at early Model 70 barrels and see how much material was removed to leave an integral ramp front sight and hump in the middle of the barrel for stock attachment. This went on post WWII.
I also have a Model 92 Winchester that was factory rebarreld with a Model 65 barrel in .218 Bee. This has an integral ramp front sight. All of these examples had to be very costly and time consuming during production so to me, it's very conceivable that the solid rib barrels were originally milled from larger stock.
Last edited by Bob Saathoff; 01/30/14 06:04 PM.
