In response to the thread on "Poor Mans Double Rifle," I decided to have a go at it.
I have had an old *** Stevens 311 Double Barrel 12ga. Shotgun in my safe for many years. I have wanted to cut the barrels and make it into a 20" Barreled "Coach Gun" to use as a simple Home Defense Gun my wife could conceivably use in an emergency.
Cutting the barrels off was the easy part and took all of 10 minutes to cut and grind the ends square.
Then a couple of design deficiencies reared their ugly heads.
First: the barrels don't stay far enough down after cocking to get spent rounds out and new ones in. You have to compress the Hammer Springs to their limits in order to make this happen. which pretty much eliminates any form of fast loading or reloading. The gun will NOT stay open on its own it reverts back to the "Hammers on the Sears" position with the chambers below the back of the receiver as soon as you release the barrels, thus you need three hands to load it!
There is a fix on the internet for this which involves re-profiling the cocking lever to allow the barrels to drop lower, but it is poorly explained and the sketch is literally on a piece of notebook paper with some scrawled writing as explanation.
I can get thru this part.
The second problem is that after firing the firing pins don't retract and the gun is a bear to open prompting many to literally break the gun in half over their knee to open it. This is pure BS!
I know that these guns were essentially inexpensive versions of the excellent Fox model B, however they kind of missed something in the translation.
Does anyone have any decent solutions to these two problems? The internet is virtually no help at all on this subject as is You Tube. I figure someone in the Cowboy Action Shooting Crowd might have some answers.
Randy