doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com SKB sxs barrels interchangable?

Good morning.
I have an SKB 12ga model 100 non ejector with 30" barrels. I found a set of 26" model 100 barrels for sale. Are SKB barrels interchangeable? There isn't any wear on my gun or the 26" barrels.
Thanks,
Bill

Not factory interchangeable in my experience. They may require fitting, from minor to major. Kind of luck of the draw. But you should give them a try and have them fit to your gun. It is not that difficult in many cases and not that expensive. But don’t let any hamfisted moron do it. It can go wrong if they don’t know how to do it.

Good advice given here which could be said of any make of gun & barrel fitting. These aren't plug & play mechanical devices. Even in these days of CNC precision machining, the manufactures of SxS & O/U guns still do a lot of hand fitting to get things just right.

For 30 plus years I bought a ton of orphan barrels in common American doubles. Fox in graded, Sterlingworth and small bores, Baker, Lefever and many others. Often barrels in good condition could be bought for $20-100.00. Wish I could find a nice set of 20 Sterlingworth barrels like that these days. I’d even go as high as $200.00. Big spender.

Always hoped to find the rest of the gun. Did that exactly once. Bought the barrels first, forend with metal a few months later at a gun show in the next state. Then bumped into the first dealer who had found the rest of the gun while cleaning out his shop. Funny thing was he could not recall what happened to the fore end. Wear did not match, so I figured that fore end got used on a second gun for years.

I fit many a second set of barrels to a gun over the years. Sometimes they almost fit themselves and sometimes they took a lot of effort. Smoke, files and patience go along ways in fitting them. I tried magic marker and even lipstick as a marking system. I am down to just a few orphans these days and have little interest in buying more. One big factor is having either the proper forend for your spare barrels that comes with them or an extra one to fit onto the second set of barrels. Too many times the barrels would work but required fitting the forend to either both barrels or hoping you could get by until your found a second forend.

Fitting barrels properly is tedious enough. Making one forend work with two sets of barrels takes that time and skill to the quantum level. 'Smiths who can PROPERLY fit a set of barrels to a doublegun are not on every street corner. Learning that truth was costly for me. It is a skill that I want to learn for myself before leaving this mortal plane. Having tried and failed at it, I am now even more determined.

There was an excellent article in a Shooting Sportsman magazine some years ago, I believe by Vic Venters, that was titled "Jointing on the Circle", AIR. It was by far the best piece on the subject I've ever seen. I have lost track of it, but may just dig through all my old copies, this rainy day, until I find it again. It is well worth the effort.


This is just my opinion, for what it's worth, but building a gun that has interchangeable barrel sets is not beyond the capabilities of CNC manufacturing. The Thompson Contender break action is an example, with it's interchangeable barrels in different calibers, and it handles chamber pressures many times higher than any shotgun shell.

Thanks for the input gentleman.

It’s the fore end fitting as much as anything that I hate. But I also hate fitting new wood for a fore end so maybe it is me. Sometimes you just get lucky and one fits both barrels. Rare in my experience. It is far simpler to fit or better yet already have the fore end for the second set of barrels. I did make the mistake of trying to use one metal for both barrels and ended up with one who was loose on both. That sucked. Ended up refitting it back to the first barrel and finding a second fore end to fit the second barrels. Measure three times, take just a slight amount I’d metal off and measure/smoke/file or hone slightly.

I am told that B. Rizzini barrels will interchange in the same frame size.

I am told that they achieve this by ensuring every barrel will fit into a master frame for that size.

I would be interested in getting my hands on 2 Bonehill Interchangable guns to find ou5 if they would let me swap barrels and fore-ends.

Valmet O/U shotguns/double rifles came as close to total interchangeability in a double gun as any I've ever seen.

I've owned an Ithaca SKB since 1970. I later bought another one with a broken stock. I restocked the first one and made a beavertail forend for it and put 10,000's of rounds thru it. The loop finally came loose from the big forend. I put the barrels from the second gun on the first one's frame and they fit. They were a bit tight at first but wore in ok. I was surprised at that. After shooting them for a few years I got around to soldering the loop back into the barrels and put the other set back where they belonged. There is someone selling the remaining SKB barrels on ebay. These barrels are in various stages of completion. I've bought 2 sets so far. One set that I bought is to be fit on a 200E skeet gun that I have to make it more versatile. That set is 28" and I was able to get the ejector parts from Numrich. I think I got lucky on that swap but I would say that they are all pretty close and probably not as difficult to fit as some other guns. Yes I did have to adjust the forend fit but with a lot of use you have to adjust loose forends anyway.