The Unforgiving Minute

Working on an update. Still on a shotgun kick and building another 870. Picked up one of these to try out:

Stay tuned.

Last month’s full-choke experiment impressed me so much that I decided the barrel would live on the Wingmaster testbed gun permanently, but the gun itself needed a little help.

I picked it up on the cheap because, well, it was a genuine beater, a hard-used, worn, ratty old gun. The serial number dated to 1979, and it saw 30 years of service as a state-owned gun in Wyoming (Game and Fish? Prison? State Police? I don’t know). When it came to me the finish was worn and scratched, and both stock and forend were missing a lot of finish and significant chunks of wood. The ejector had been replaced without refinishing the receiver, leaving a large patch of bare steel on the left side of the gun. Still, it was a mechanically sound DuPont-era Wingmaster, and it’s really hard to truly wear out a Remington 870. This one just needed a little overhaul.

So, off it went to Wilson Combat for their Remington Steal rebuild package. I opted for the basic rebuild, with two changes: I requested a short stock and the Wilson jumbo head safety. Three weeks later, my gun was back, outfitted with a SpeedFeed Youth buttstock (13″ LOP) and Law Enforcement forend:

The receiver was converted to handle 3″ shells (by installing the 3″ ejector assembly) and updated with the flexitab modification. All the steel parts aside from the chrome bolt were blasted and nicely parkerized:

The gun’s old rack number, stamped into the receiver, is still there:

The trigger plate assembly was either refinished or replaced; I can’t tell if it’s the original, but it’s still alloy, not the plastic part used on current guns. The Jumbo Head safety was installed as well.

And still sporting that weird, wonderful full-choke barrel:

I haven’t been out to the range yet, but I did do quite a bit of function testing with dummy rounds and everything seems to be in order. Looking forward to doing some shooting!

After pattern-testing my new full-choke 870 barrel and seeing the differences between the Remington #1 buck load and the Winchester Supreme #1 20-pellet load, I decided to sacrifice one of my precious, rare Winchester rounds to take a look inside.

There’s the expected 20 pellets of copper-plated shot, plenty of buffer material, and a full-length shot cup to protect the shot from contact with the bore. Regular (non-premium) shells like the Remington use a simple plastic wad instead of the full-length shot cup. It acts as a gas seal to keep powder gasses away from the shot, but the pellets are still free to rub against the bore and deform. You can see the results in the previous post: the Winchester patterns significantly tighter than the Remington.

Sadly, this particular Winchester offering is extinct. I bought out Brownell’s entire stock and continue searching for odd lots on Gunbroker, but it’s pretty scarce.

I’m susceptible to the occasional impulse buy, and I like weird, offbeat guns. So when I saw some very unusual Remington 870 barrels on sale at CDNN for the low, low price of $99.99, well, hell, that’s practically pocket change…

What’s weird and offbeat about it? It’s a factory Remington 870 Police barrel, 20″, polished and blued, typical bead sight, and a fixed full choke.

I’ve never seen such a beast before. Every “consumer” 870 riot gun barrel I’ve ever seen was cylinder bored, and 870 Police barrels are typically choked Improved Cylinder or, much less commonly, Modified. A full choke is a real oddity. My best guess is that these tubes were built for a special order, and either the order was canceled or Remington produced an overrun. The part number is 24548, and good luck finding it in a Remmy catalog or price list.

The barrel I got is indeed new, but it looks like it sat on the shelf for a loooong time. It’s slightly shopworn and has a few small flaws in the bluing. The magazine support has taken on the purplish color you sometimes see on old blued parts. Not a big deal, and for a hundred bucks I’m not gonna complain, but it makes me suspect these barrels came off the line more than a few years ago. It does have the detent ball that’s missing from many current Remington barrels, which is nice.

In theory, the tight choke should produce tight patterns, which are all the rage for tactical shotguns these days. The cool kids send their barrels off to Vang Comp and use fancy shotshells with plated, hardened, buffered shot and trick wads, all to make an open choke gun shoot like it’s tightly choked. Why not use an actual tight choke instead?

Well, two reasons, really. First, an overly-tight choke can actually open up patterns, especially with buckshot. Smaller shot has an easier time of flowing through the choke, but the big pellets of buckshot can instead get squeezed and deformed as they pass through the constriction, causing flyers as the out-of-round pellets tumble. Second, a full choke may or may not work well with slugs. It’s generally safe to put slugs through a modern full choke barrel (check with the manufacturer if in doubt!), but the slug might get squeezed enough to ruin accuracy.

Then again, every shotgun barrel is a law unto itself, and you never know what it will do until you shoot it. I dropped this barrel onto an old, beat-to-hell Wingmaster riot gun, threw on a Remington 3-round extension, and headed to the range.

I brought along the three types of buckshot I had on hand:

• Winchester’s standard Super X 2 3/4″, 9-pellet #00 buck load, SKU XB1200. This is probably THE most common buckshot load in the country, the one you’ll find in every sporting goods store and *mart, frequently on sale or in 15-round “value packs”. It’s buffered but not plated or hardened, and there’s no fancy shot cup to prevent deformation.
• Remington’s 2 3/4″, 16-pellet #1 buck load, SKU 12B1. Buffered, unplated, no shot cup.
• Winchester’s now-discontinued “baby magnum” Supreme Double X Magnum 2 3/4″, 20-pellet #1 buck, SKU X12C1B. These are copper-plated, but I haven’t dissected a shell to see if they’re buffered or what kind of cup/wad is used.

Patterning was done at 15 and 25 yards. Pictures suck because I used my cellphone and didn’t have a lot of time.

#1 buck, 15 yards, 13" spread

#1 buck, 25 yards, 21" spread

The Remington #1 buck threw the largest patterns by far: 13″ spread at 15 yards, and 21″ at 25 yards. Not too impressive. #1 buck does have a reputation for throwing bigger patterns than #00, and these are still better than you’d see out of a cylinder bore, but they’re larger than I expected/hoped. Winchester’s version of this load uses a shot cup and might perform better; I need to buy some and test it.

#1 buck, 20 pellets, 15 yards, 7.5" spread

#1 buck, 20 pellets, 25 yards, 16.75" spread

The fancy Winchester baby magnum #1 buck shot significantly tighter. The pattern at 25 yards had a pretty dense center with a few flyers that opened things up. It’s possible that the full choke is just a little bit too tight for this load.

#00 buck, 15 yards, 6" spread

#00 buck, 25 yards, 9" spread

The really surprising one was the Winchester #00 buck. 6″ pattern at 15 yards, and only 9″ at 25 yards. With a cylinder bore you’ll often see patterns that size at 10 yards! Every shotgun is unique, but this particular barrel really likes that particular load. And that’s a lucky thing, given the universal availability of XB1200. There’s a lot to be said for a shotgun that performs really, really well with the most common ammunition in the country.

Overall I’m quite pleased with this oddball barrel. It might just stay on that beat-to-hell Wingmaster and take a trip to Wilson Combat for their Remington Steal overhaul… Also, who knows where I can get a deal on a case of XB1200?

Was looking over the Glock 17L tonight and I noticed some lightening cuts in the slide that had previously escaped my attention. There’s a cut in the side of the slide, opposite the ejection port:

And another in the underside, parallel to the striker channel:

Combined with the big opening cut into the top of the slide, the top half of the gun is only a bit heavier than a standard Glock 17 slide assembly. Apparently those cuts are necessary to keep the reciprocating mass low enough to work with a regular G17/22/31 recoil spring assembly.

I don’t know if these cuts are present on any of the other longslide Glocks. Any G24, 34, and/or 35 owners care to chime in?

I usually get what I want. Sometimes it just takes me a really, really long time. I’ve been wanting a Glock 17L for… <counts on fingers, then removes socks and starts on toes>… 17 years, give or take.

17Ls were officially discontinued years back, but Glock continues to sporadically produce tiny batches of guns. Seems like every 2 or 3 years a few hit the market and stay available for about a week, quickly snapped up by folks who are not eager to part with them. I’ve *never* seen a used one offered for sale in my area.

So, when I got word that a few more guns would be slipping out of Smyrna, I started bugging my friendly local gunshoppe. They managed to snag a gun for me, then replaced the gawd-awful factory adjustable sights with a set of Trijicon’s new HD night sights.

Pretty pictures:

Longslide is, indeed, looooong.

Front sight has a bright orange ring around the tritium vial.

Rear tritium vials are sans rings, to direct attention toward the front sight, where it belongs. The wide, U-shaped notch is supposed to make sight acquisition faster. The width of the notch definitely helps; I’m not convinced the U shape makes any difference.

This picture sucks, I couldn’t get the camera to stay focused on the front sight. It does give you some idea what the sight picture actually looks like. In reality the front sight appears larger and is VERY eye-catching.

First range session was today. The gun had numerous FTRBs with CCI Blazer but ran perfectly on Gold Dot +Ps. It apparently has no tolerance for wimpy ammunition. I have 500 rounds of Georgia Arms 115-gr FMJ coming in tomorrow; we’ll see how the gun likes that.

More to come…

Awhile back I blogged about #1 buckshot and its advantages over the ubiquitous #00 buck. That bit centered around the standard 2 3/4″ loadings, being 16 pellets of #1 and 9 pellets of #00. There’s also a slightly rarer critter sometimes called the “baby magnum” load, carrying a larger payload (12 pellets of #00 or 20 pellets of #1), albeit at a slightly reduced velocity.

Only problem is, while the #00 “baby magnums” are still offered by several companies, their #1 buck counterparts have been entirely absent from the scene for a long time. Your only options were loading your own or perhaps stumbling across some dusty old inventory in a gunshop somewhere. No one, and I mean *no one* catalogs this stuff anymore.

Or didn’t, until Brownells started selling ammo last week. I was idly browsing through their offerings when I came across stock no. 105-202-870, Winchester part no. WINX12C1B, which just happens to be the near-mythical #1 buck baby magnum, with copper-plated shot to boot! I checked my credit card balance, did some quick mental math, and promptly ordered 15 boxes. My own order safely placed, I shared the link with some friends, only to find the item now coming up “Out of Stock.” I apparently bought their entire supply. Yeah, sometimes I’m a dick.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with this ammo; there’s no trace of it on Winchester’s website, nor at any ammo retailers. The only reference I could find anywhere was a listing in Winchester’s 2008 Law Enforcement catalog. The stuff I got from Brownells has a lot number ending in “07″, the boxes are a bit shopworn, and there’s some tarnish on the brass. My best guess is that Brownells bought up some old stock that had been languishing in Winchester’s warehouse. If that’s indeed the case, I think I’m going to shoot just enough of these shells to see how they pattern, then put up the rest in long-term storage. Might be a very long time before I can buy more…

Yep, still alive. The shit-sandwich project that got dumped on me in mid-March was scheduled to take 4 weeks. We’re now at 12 weeks and there’s no end in sight. Boss thinks that “Is it done yet?” is a really hilarious joke.

So… I’m looking for a new job.

On the gun front, I finally got started on the .38 Super project that’s been rolling around in my head for a few years now. Picked up the base gun, a blued Colt with the “100 YEARS OF SERVICE” rollmark, and spent a few months gradually accumulating bits and pieces for the build. The gun’s down at Coal Creek Armory right now, where Shannon Jennings is working his magic on it. I’m hoping to have it back in a few months. Insufferable bragging A full write-up will follow.