I have a Pardner shotgun I purchased from a gun show. It started life as a youth model .410 (at least that's how t came to me). I have aslo fitted it with a second-hand 12 Gauge barrel with a 3 1/2" chamber. I have only shot 1 3 1/2" shell from this setup (a factory-labeled Turkey Shell) and the recoil was more intense than I expected. This led me to buy a Limbsaver pad and construct an inertial recol reducer.
Recently, I was inspecting the gun for my upcoming turkey hunt, and I noticed that the forend had a crack starting in it. This got me wondering if I was asking too much of the little gun. Maybe I should keep it to 3" shells, or maybe the crack was due to the forend fitting too tightly to the barrel?