Poor man's "Express" gun

[daleraby]

I had a thought this morning on the way home from church. I've always hoped I could one day have a SXS "Express" rifle in something like 600 or 700 Nitro Express, but such guns are kinda out of my price range and I don't honestly have any way to justify the purchase even if I did decide to do it anyway. Also, at $100.00/shot, even if I could afford the gun, I could never afford to shoot it very much.

Now, I have been half-heartedly experimenting with a store-brand break-action 16 gauge single shot. I got it fitted with a recoil pad to spare my shoulder. I've got some MagTech 16 gauge brass shells and have loaded some patched Rush Creek .626 round balls atop a light charge of Alliant Green Dot. I had to improvise some of the components I wanted to use, but even so, I was able to hit a gallon milk jug at fifty yards using just the bead. No idea what kind of pressures or performance I was dealing with, but the recoil was fairly light and there were no obvious signs of excessive pressure.

Sooooo.... I thought "why not do this with a double?" The gun I would probably sacrifice.... ummm... utilize... for the project would potentially be a Savage/Stevens 311 series shotgun in either 16 gauge or 12 gauge. The butchery...ummm... modifications... would potentially include:

1. cutting the barrels a bit shorter to remove the chokes
2. installing a rear express sight with two to four leaves
3. installing a small gold bead front sight
4. installing a recoil pad

Most likely, the barrels would not be very well regulated, so my solution would be to use one or more leaves for the "close range" barrel and the other(s) for the "long range" barrel.

I had considered cut rifling of one or both barrels. It would potentially be very shallow slow-twist (1:66?) rifling. After thinking about it for another mile or two, I decided that this was not necessary immediately. I had gotten acceptable accuracy with my single shot through a full choke without any real load development, so rifling might not even be necessary. Besides, I could always do it later if I wanted to.

My intended purpose would be as a deer gun for close cover. In Wisconsin, most deer are killed at ranges right around thirty yards. That close, I could probably use the bead sight the gun came with. Initially, I might just try it with the original bead for reference, but I would still want the express sight just for appearances sake.

Any thoughts?

[HWooldridge]

You can hone out the chokes and save yourself some work there.

I might also leave the front bead alone for now and just install a rear sight then try it (although elevation might not be right).

The so-called “smooth” muzzleloader rifles were reportedly pretty accurate out to 150 yds with a properly fit and patched ball so rifling the barrels might not be necessary, especially at the ranges you are considering.

[elmacgyver0]

There have been a lot of deer killed with smooth bore shotguns with deer slugs.

[RustyReel]

You gotta go with the double if you really want an "express gun experience". Single barrel is simply a slug gun, lots available, rifled or not, scope or open sights.

You may also want to consider the 12 ga version of the 311 and picking up a couple of 45/70 chamber adapters. Unless you think express means 60 cal or above.

[country gent]

I have been thinking a similar project through for a couple years now. I am thinking a 311 stevens savage in 410 or 28 gauge. cut barrels to 22 inches or so. then sleeve to 22 caliber and chamber to 22 rim fire. Sights would need to be made and installed maybe a claw type scope mount at some point. The new extractor wouldnt be to rough to make. But regulating the liners is going to be tricky. Im currently thinking a eccentric bushing at the muzzle. Ive also considered going up to 32 S&W long if i find a 28 gauge. It will also probably require new firing pins and bushings.
Then restock with a nice piece of walnut fore end and butt stock matching to get the true Holland and Holland look. The big thing no is the regulating the barrels to one set of sights. I would probably regulate it a 50 yds.

[schutzen-jager]

one of the older Gun Digest there was an article about making a double into a smooth bore express gun - only problem was he could never get both barrels regulated to a close point of aim - finally gave up + used single projectile that shot to point of aim + loaded other barrel with buckshot -

[Green Frog]

“There is nothing new under the sun!” There was a cottage industry back in the 1970s where they took cheap but relatively strong (Stevens 311 type) doubles and fitting either 444 or 45-70 barrels and regulating them… they called them “Poor Man’s Doubles” and the conversion back then was pretty affordable if you provided the gun. I don’t know whether a .4XX” bore is big enough for you(?)
If I were going to do what you describe, I’d probably take a 12 ga gun and sleeve it to 64 cal to get the extra thickness of steel. I bought 2 boxes of MagTech 16 ga brass to make 64 cal ammo for my Maynard… it’s pretty good stuff”!
Please keep us up to date on your progress!
Froggie

[Der Gebirgsjager]

You might get some ideas by reading Texas by God's thread on making a stub barrel gun. He has successfully sleeved the barrels of single shot shotguns with rifle barrels, notably a .44-40. There's no reason I can see why this couldn't be done to a side-by-side double barreled shotgun of adequate strength. Probably actually less involved, and maybe cheaper than trying to rifle a shotgun barrel. I certainly wouldn't recommend any of the African safari calibers/cartridges, but if having something like a twin 30-30 wouldn't be enough bore size to make you happy you could still go with a huge bore and round balls or custom loaded ammo. Black powder is another option.

DG

[lar45]

I bought a book some years ago about building double rifles on shotgun actions. I think it was by W Ellis Brown??
things to look for in a donor action is double under lugs and a greener cross bolt. These will make the action much more resistant to abuse.
The German made Saur guns are built fairly heavily.
I started with a Belgian upland 12 ga. It turned out to be a little on the light side. Maybe a Heavy waterfowl 12ga would have been better?
The Spanish Zabala guns are really nice, but I think the steel is abit soft. I bought 2 10 ga doubles, gave one to a friend who ran some warm round ball loads in it and it came off face pretty quickly.

Not to side track your thread, but here are some pics of my 470NE project.













I cut the barrels to 24", then I made 12ga barrel liners, then shimmed the ends to regulate to the sights and silver soldered them in place.
I shot mostly 500gn cast at 2150fps.
The gun shot really well and was abit lively at 8#, so I put 2# of lead in the butt.
The stock started to crack after about 100 rounds, so I epoxied it, reinforced it and machined a steel recoil block and bedded it into the stock. All better.
After about 300 full power loads, the action has started to come off face a little bit, so it's retired except for when someone really wants to shoot a 470NE.

[lar45]

Here's a pic of the NECG Express sights mounted to the rib.

[longbow]

Not only has this been done many times but there are variations from using liners in the barrels to actually cutting off the shotgun barrels then coring the chambers and turning rifle barrels to fit then silver soldering in plkace and from there treating as a double rifle by wwedgine and regulating barrels.

https://www.docsmachine.com/projects/gun/double1.html

Here is a good read:

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...fle-conversion

These guys make rifled inserts an a variety of calibers:

https://chaszel.com/product/45-70-shotgun-adapters/

Barrel inserts would be an easy option, just buy tow rifled inserts then go shoot.

Another "easy" option is to buy something like Stoeger shotgun or coach gun with screw in chokes then buy two rifled choke tubes.

As you note though regulation is likely going to be an issue.

My thought has been to buy a side by, cut the barrels down to about 24" and install rifle sights then use slugs to determine regulation. If I lucked out and it was reasonably well regulated then just use it but if not then either have two sets of sights as some of the cheaper muzzleloader double rifles had or consider it a "cape gun" with one barrel sighted and one approximate. The "cape gun" idea would work for smoothbore or double rifle inserts or rifled choke tubes or one rifled insert and one shotgun barrel.

From what I've read some people have been quite happy with a basic conversion as reguulation has been good enough and some not so happy because regulation was not good enough. For shotguns regulation does not need to be as precise as for a rifle so it is a bit of a crap shoot as to what you get. But certainly doable in a variety of ways. I am still planning to try it myself.

Baikal used to offer a side by with .45-70 inserts and eccentri collars to regulate the inserts.

https://www.mikebeliveau.com/magazin...ansdoublerifle

https://www.shootinguk.co.uk/reviews...-mp-221-45-70/

However you do it the project should be fun!

Longbow

[ascast]

I like what I see here..

[Jedman]

I built a SXS double rifle in 45-70 from a 12 ga. double back in the 1980’s. I basically cut the shotgun barrels off at the front of the receiver leaving a stub about 3” long with the underlug and cross bolt lug in one piece. I set up the stub in a mill vice standing up vertically and bored both chambers out parallel to each other.
I turned the barrel blanks to fit the stub and made a muzzle block with the same center to center spacing as the stub. I then built 2 jigs to hold the breech and the muzzle of the barrels aligned and had it clamped to the mill table. I made a rib that would join into the face of the stub and was hand fit to the barrels and silver soldered everything together at the same time.
It came out quite well, I have fixed sights that I made that are sighted to 70 yards and both barrels will shoot within 1 1/2” of each other at that distance. I have killed deer, a bear and pigs with it.
It was a lot of filing and fitting to get it all looking good and I would not do that again at my age now.

If I would do another double rifle now I would probably measure the difference center to center between the muzzle and the breech ends of a good SXS donor gun and turn two barrel liners eccentric.
I believe you could fit everything close before epoxying them in and shoot the gun and get the impacts as close as possible and make witness marks between the liners and the breech face then glue them in.

I met a guy at a gun show last month that made a double rifle from a 20 ga. SXS and installed 38-55 liners. He used set screws at the muzzle to adjust each barrel separately then soldered the barrels at the muzzle and cut off the end with the set screws and finished it nicely. He was in his lare 70’s and was just trying to sell off some of his guns he no longer shot. If I would have been in the market for such a gun I would have bought it as he did really nice work.

I will add a pic of my double rifle tomorrow, it’s to dark now to take pics with this iPad and I have to go round it up.

JedmanAttachment 323410Attachment 323410 I had 5 pics but iPad would only allow me the first one ?

[MostlyLeverGuns]

I believe there is a new edition of the W Ellis Brown book on " Building Double Rifles on Shotgun Actions ". I think it is self-published and available from the author. Saw an ad in Handloader, Rifle or home Shop Machinist magazine.

[Kosh75287]

I have pondered a project like this for the last few years. When I mentioned it on another website, the more experienced shotgunners who (evidently) tried it reported disappointing results. I was not thinking in terms of barrel inserts (DANDY idea, though), nor trying to regulate the barrels to a common point of impact. I was thinking, instead, of creating a front and rear sight for EACH barrel, which may be adjusted, a la rifle sights.
MY thought was to devise a quick-mount assembly for front sights (one over EACH barrel) in which sights of different heights may be installed, to govern elevation. A quick-mount assembly for windage-adjustable rear sights (one per barrel, also) could be mounted over or forward of the chambers.
Unfortunately, I am nowhere near being a machinist, and I am not even enough of a "tinkerer" (?) to get past drawings of what I have in mind, with the sights.
My original thought was to use a saboted slug, along the lines of the Remington Accutips available in 12 or 20 gauge. The 12 gauge version launches a 385 gr. expanding slug at ~1900 f/s, which is probably enough "OOMPH" to reliably drop anything in the western hemisphere. I am unsure if better performance (certainly not velocity, but maybe projectile weight) could be obtained with conventional Foster-style slugs, but I have never tried.

I just thought that it would be far easier to attach and then adjust sights on each barrel, rather than to try regulating both barrels together.

[HWooldridge]

One thing to consider is the desired purpose. A heavy double rifle that prints each barrel within 4" at 50 yards would be quite useful on large, dangerous game - but it's not a varmint gun.

[schutzen-jager]

One thing to consider is the desired purpose. A heavy double rifle that prints each barrel within 4" at 50 yards would be quite useful on large, dangerous game - but it's not a varmint gun.

jmho - 4" forward, back, up. or down from point of aim would also make it's use on deer, hogs, + other similar or smaller sized game - would likely result in miss, gut shot, or long suffering wounded animal - 4" deviation at under 50yds. could result in 3 or more times that as distance increases -

[Kosh75287]

Reviews of the ammunition I mentioned report 3" groups at 100 yards, which would be more like it. I should point out that nobody reported such groups with a SxS shotgun, but I don't know why it would not be possible, if a single barrel was tested.

[HWooldridge]

jmho - 4" forward, back, up. or down from point of aim would also make it's use on deer, hogs, + other similar or smaller sized game - would likely result in miss, gut shot, or long suffering wounded animal - 4" deviation at under 50yds. could result in 3 or more times that as distance increases -

That's why I mentioned "large, dangerous game" - and 50 yards could be a functional user limit with a single set of express sights; e.g. 500 NE or larger on grizzly or moose, etc. It would be relatively easy to check alignment on a double (or an over under) using slugs with the original barrel setup.

Here is the ML version, still pretty pricey: https://www.davide-pedersoli.com/en/...kodiak-express

[John Taylor]

Several years back I made a Winchester model 21 into a 416-500 for a customer. Started with making a new mono block and threaded the barrels to it. Customer wanted 24" barrel which I was not happy with but that's what the customer ordered. Luckily the barrel regulated easy. I used a lead sled and had hearing protection but the muzzle blast was still bad.