Got me a Rifled Barrel for my old A5

[NyFirefighter357]

My smooth bores shoot 3" groups @ 100yrds all day. I went to rifled shotguns not only to shoot more accurately but to extend my shooting distance and to have a much flatter trajectory. My rifled shotguns are sighted in with sabots with a Nikon BDC reticle to 200yrds. They are both 12ga but if I did much hunting anymore I'd like to get the Savage 220 20ga rifled slug gun or a rifled barrel for one of my 12ga 1100.

[longbow]

What smoothbore gun and load is giving you 3" groups at 100 yards? Is this with home cast and loaded slugs or factory slug loads?

I wouldn't bother with a rifled gun if I could get dependable groups under 6" at 100 yards with home cast and loaded slugs. If I could get 3" to 4" groups i'd be ecstatic!

Best I've managed so far is a little under 6" groups at 100 yards with factory Foster slugs and 6" + with home loaded AQ slugs. I have shot some nice small groups at times but certainly not consistently or dependably.

Longbow

[W.R.Buchanan]

The Smoothbore Browning Barrels are supposed to shoot really well. 3"? I don't know but I will find out soon. Waiting for one part to come and then I'll go shoot it.

Also I'll be shooting with iron sights so we'll have to take that into consideration as well. The smooth bore barrel did come with a B-Square Saddle Mount and a 3-9 Tasco scope, but that would be a receiver mount and there's no guarantee that it will re-align with the barrel every time the barrel cycles. Remember on an A5 the entire barrel moves strait back about 3" and then back forward to go back in battery every time the gun cycles. Lots of movement there.

You'll also notice that most shotgun barrels meant to be used with a scope have a Cantilever Scope Mount. No such thing for an A5.

I'll probably put the gun in a vise and put an indicator on the end of the barrel and flex it back and forth and see how much it flexes and if it repeats it's "in battery" position.

Mounting my Burris Fast Fire 3 onto a little piece of Pic Rail on top of a block replacing the rear sight block won't be affected by this movement The sight has survived about 500 rounds on top of my G35 so I think the slower movement of the shotgun barrel shouldn't bother it much, if at all.

More to come.

Randy

[bikerbeans]

What smoothbore gun and load is giving you 3" groups at 100 yards? Is this with home cast and loaded slugs or factory slug loads?

I wouldn't bother with a rifled gun if I could get dependable groups under 6" at 100 yards with home cast and loaded slugs. If I could get 3" to 4" groups i'd be ecstatic!

Best I've managed so far is a little under 6" groups at 100 yards with factory Foster slugs and 6" + with home loaded AQ slugs. I have shot some nice small groups at times but certainly not consistently or dependably.

Longbow

LB,

Holy Grail load.

BB

[longbow]

Randy:

A bit off topic except for semi auto 12 ga. shotgun...

I used to have a Winchester model 50 someone had cut down and put rifle sights on. This was in the 70's. It was an interesting action. The chamber floated and recoiled back part way with the bolt before they separated and the hull and bolt continued to eject and feed another round. The floating chamber looked kinda like a large bottleneck cartridge. As I recall it functioned quite well and that extra mass must have helped absorb recoil. I'm guessing same principle as the A5 with recoiling barrel... and maybe competition?

I sold it because it was fairly old at the time and had not been taken care of. The outside of the chamber was badly corroded and no spares around where I lived.

I don't recall having any failures to eject or feed and only shot handloads assembled with an old Lee Loader.

How is the A5 for handling varying power handloads?

Looking forward to your smoothbore testing... and rifled barrel testing. I'm sure we'll get a thorough field report or two.

Longbow

[W.R.Buchanan]

The A5 action deals with recoil of various loads (Low or High) by the way you set up the "Friction Ring" on the magazine in front of the recoil spring.

There is 2 pieces you have to set up right. A Bronze Friction Ring, and a Steel Friction Sleeve. There is a tapered edge on the front end of the Bronze Friction Ring and there is a corresponding taper cut into the barrel band as the barrel moves back under recoil the tapers close the bronze ring and increases the friction thus mitigating recoil.

For Low Power Loads the steel friction ring is placed on the receiver end of the recoil spring with its flat side against the recoil spring.

For High Power Loads the steel ring which has a taper on one side is placed behind the Bronze Ring in front of the Recoil Spring.

During the harsher recoil of high power loads both the barrels taper and the steel friction ring's tapers work against the bronze ring and close it down harder thus increasing friction and mitigating recoil even further.

I have no idea how JMB came up with this system but it has been working great for the last 120 years.

The whole gun is a marvel of engineering and there is so much stuff going on inside that receiver it amazes me.

Randy

[W.R.Buchanan]

OK I have reached my limit with this gun. It will not run in a manner that makes it viable for 3 gun shooting.

In order to load the magazine you must push the bolt release button and that allows the carrier to move up. The only way to do this is to turn the gun over and press the bolt release button with your left thumb while trying to insert a shell into the mag. As soon as you release the round in the mag, the carrier pops back up and you must depress the button again to insert another round. The carrier will not stay down out of the way and you can't just depress the carrier with the shell like you can with every other gun in creation. You must push the button.

Obviously there is no way to load this gun tactically or even in an expeditious manner. You can't do a Select Slug changeover in a speedy manner.

IE: The gun has Buckshot in the chamber and the mag but the mag is not completely full. A longer shot presents itself and the normal mode of operation would be to quickly shove a slug into the mag and then rack the slide or bolt wasting the chambered round and bringing up the slug. The manipulation to do this with this gun would not make the time limits. Just too much futsing around to make it happen.

Also in the scenario where you have fired several rounds and need to top off the mag, you would normally do this by bringing rounds from your shell carrier to the underside of the gun with your left hand and shoving them in with the gun at the high ready. Can't do that with this gun. You have to turn it over to load it. period. This was fixed with the newer guns with the two piece carrier however along with the two piece carrier you get the Speed Feed function which feeds the first round you shove into the magazine right into the chamber and closes the bolt automatically, then you can load the gun properly without having to diddle with the carrier latch button. I can't for the life of me understand why JMB designed this gun like this. It went 50+ years before they fixed this problem.

I managed to ruin one carrier latch and I thought I almost had it as I could get the carrier to push the latch out of the way but then it wouldn't hold the bolt open. #$%&)!#@ or in fact you get one or the other you don't get both with a one piece carrier.

The solution is to install a later 2 piece carrier in which case you can load the gun correctly however there is more to it than just dropping the part in. It requires "Fitting" which is the most abused word in gunsmithing as it implies hidden knowledge that can only be gleaned from divine sources. IE: If you don't know exactly how to fit it, you're screwed.

I could put the new barrels on my nice A5 and be done with it however I am not going to subject a 99.9% gun to the rigors of 3 gun, so I'll probably just sell this one and find a later model gun and use it. It is fully operational now and holds the bolt back after the last round, so it is good to go and with a little more clean up it will easily bring $600+.

Grr,,, Life goes on ! Not the result I was looking for. But now I have two really nice slug barrels

Randy

[W.R.Buchanan]

OK put out feelers for another A5 today, and found one immediately however it was older than the one I have but in nicer shape. Still a no go even though the price was right, as it had the one piece carrier.

I need a mid to late 60's A5 SN 4G 72750 or higher. Cosmetic condition not important as long as it is not too bad. Needs to have the two piece carrier which is easily shown by your ability to depress it without having to press the Bolt Release Button. You have to depress the button to load a single piece carrier gun.

If you've got something you want to get rid of for a Very Reasonable price PM me.

Not interested in your high dollar family heirloom.

I've already got a beautiful one and it ain't going' to the competitions. It is my Family's Heirloom!

This gun will be going to 3 gun comps and needs to run but not necessarily be beautiful.

Randy

[tomme boy]

How are the Remington versions?

[W.R.Buchanan]

I've seen several A5's in the last couple of days, but no Rem 11's. In fact the only Rem 11's I have ever seen were ex military ones with very high price tags.

I put in an offer on a later A5 today, he wanted $895 and I offered $695. The gun has mismatched wood and was from Japan which by itself is not a big deal to me. They are as good or better than the Belgian ones but usually don't look as nice.

My good gun is absolutely beautiful in the sun.

Anyway I'm sure something will turn up soon as I have 4 shops looking for me.

I put mine up for sale today at $675 and it looked good after I spent and hour cleaning and touching up everything.

Also put up a couple of other guns along with it so I'll have money to buy the new A5.

Randy

[Hogtamer]

with open bolt just feed shell into mag and it slams into chamber. lever on left of gun needs to be forward . how does it get any faster than that?

[W.R.Buchanan]

HT that only works on newer guns with the two piece carrier. My older gun has the One Piece carrier and you have to push the bolt release button to get the Carrier Latch out of the way to push the Carrier down to load the mag. It doesn't self feed after that. Also you can't load the magazine with the bolt open for the same reason. AS soon as you press the bolt release to free the carrier the bolt drops and there is no round present to get fed.

The two piece carrier with the "Speed Feed" feature came about around 1960-62. My 1964 vintage gun has it. The 1950 gun I am selling doesn't have it.

The easiest way to tell if your gun has the two piece carrier is to simply push on it. If it goes up then it is a two piece carrier, if it doesn't go up its a 1 piece carrier.

One works right for my use, the other doesn't.

That's the big difference here.

Randy

[tomme boy]

I see Remingtons here at auctions go for $100 fairly regularly. In fact one of my uncles has a couple of them he uses for deer hunting. It is a plain barrel bead sight. They both are completely silver no blue left at all. They both work great yet. I always thought they were not worth anything????

[6pt-sika]

Now that the killing seasons over I wanna take my Hastings A-5 Mag fully rifled barrel to the range . I have a bunch of Remington 2 3/4” AccuTip slugs left over from the Savage 210 I no longer own as well as some Federal 3” with the Barnes Expander slug . Earlier this week we were cleaning up at the shop and discovered a box with WIN BRI sabot slugs 2 3/4” as well as 3” so I bought them all an added them to my accumulation of junk to shoot in the rifled gun .

[W.R.Buchanan]

6pt: Do be careful with the high base slugs, they will knock the snot out of you and make sure the recoil spring on the gun is set for heavy loads. I know you know all this, but others might not. It just beats an A5 to death if the recoil spring isn't set right.

Randy.

[W.R.Buchanan]

I got a Thug Slug 'Kit' from BPI with 25 ea 1 1/8oz Thug Slugs with 25 ea primed Rio hulls. All you have to do is put powder in and slide the slug in and then crimp it. $21 25 ea.

Kind of pointless to load these up light. But I will try some just cuz.

It is also pointless to shoot these slugs at a paper target other than to sight them in. They are designed to be heavy duty hunting slugs, so I will load them, shoot some to figure trajectory, and keep the rest for my impending Wild Boar Safari to Europe.

Everything most of us need or want to do with slugs can be done with Trap Loads with slugs or buck substituted for the payload. All of our cast round balls and Lyman Sabot slugs and Lee slugs will do fine for the vast majority of our shooting needs. Keep the heavy duty stuff for when it is needed.

You never know when you are going to have to shoot a pick up truck or something.

Oh and here's another little tidbit for those who haven't figured it out yet, virtually all of the good shotgun loading stuff comes from Italy. They make some of the best Shotguns so it would follow that they would make ammo too. They probably aren't allowed to have rifles so everyone is into shotguns. Any movie you see that is based in Italy everyone is carrying shotguns. no rifles.

Including, DGS slugs, Thug Slugs, Thunderbolts, Gualbos, all the plug in wads etc. (IE: most of the stuff that BPI sells.) The Russians knocked off the Italians on lots of this stuff. The Germans contributed Brenneke Slugs, We contributed Lyman Sabot Slugs, Lee slugs and Foster slugs.

I think everyone has done buckshot of one type or another.

I also got a newer A5 lined up and if the guy goes for my offer It will be a wash with the older one I'm selling.

All this is still up in the air but we are getting closer to having a rifled barrel gun.

Randy

[longbow]

Again, looking forward to range results. If those work well for you I may buy some to try. I have to be able to clone something! On that note I am mostly done on my 0.672" wad punch (16 ga. size) for Brenneke'ized Lee slugs.

One day something will work well!

longbow

[6pt-sika]

6pt: Do be careful with the high base slugs, they will knock the snot out of you and make sure the recoil spring on the gun is set for heavy loads. I know you know all this, but others might not. It just beats an A5 to death if the recoil spring isn't set right.

Randy.

Thanks for the advice , but I'm not new to the realm of factory 3" slugs , buckshot or birdshot .

[W.R.Buchanan]

OK I had something very unexpected happen today. My Paradox Slug Mould from Russia that I bought on New Years Day showed up! That's less than one week from Russia. I wasn't expecting it until the end of the month.

It was mailed in a soft package and the box with the mould was a little beat up but everything inside was OK.

This mould has three mould pins and will drop a heavy slug a light slug with a hole thru the nose so you can screw on a wad or gas seal, and hollow base slug for the plug in wads.

Still trying to get the guy with the newer A5 which turns out to be first year Japanese production to turn loose of it. I put the old one up for sale last Friday.

Randy

[W.R.Buchanan]

OK got the newer A5 today, although it is "in jail" for the next 10 days, as we say here in CA. It is a 1975 "first year" Japanese A5 with a 31.5" Belgian Barrel which I should be able to get $200 for on Ebay.

So we move forward again on this project. All you have to do is spend money.

Randy