I have heard in the past about people converting double shotguns into double rifles.

Does anyone here have any experience with this?

Any web links or reference material would be appreciated.

Only an idiot would think he could do that. That's why I'm going to try. I think an O/U will be a better first effort for me.

Many people try, but few get it right. If doing a rifle, try to get an action that will match the caliber. I have seen some awfully large and heavy rifles built on 12 bore gun actions. Get an action from a 20 0r 28 bore. This seems to be ok for many calibers.

I am speaking of English guns. Others even in small bores are just too big of an action.

If you start with a 12 bore frame, the barrels are way too large at the breech, and thus cannot be tapered down enough to lose the weight, and will look odd.

If using high pressure ammo-----bush the strikers! This is a must. There was an instance of a 1/2 way finished rifle that came apart at the head of the stock. Gas leakage back through the action! "It wasn't me"

Black powder express guns won't need to have the stikers bushed.

There are many guns that can be had for this project. Guns that have bad barrels can be picked up for a decent price, or I also have seen some of the Spanish guns taken apart and used for this. My friend worked at Rigby in California, and they took Merkel guns and used them for the rifles. To me they just looked too weird.

Converting guns to bore rifles is pretty straight forward and less costly. They are also really fun to shoot and great for deer/bear/hog hunting.

Good luck on the project.

Mark

quote:

Originally posted by tiggertate:
Only an idiot would think he could do that. That's why I'm going to try. I think an O/U will be a better first effort for me.

I have seen 44 mag inserts used in single and double barreled shot guns.

There are two big threads on this at NitroExpress.com Double Rifle Forum.

Mark,

By a "bore gun" do you mean something along the lines of the old Paradox guns?

I agree with you that I think it would be fun to have one of these old big bores.

I will go to the double-gun forum to garner some ideas. Thanks for all the input.

I have converted a Winchester SXS 20 guage a while back using inserts that I turned up and chambered it to a 405 Winchester. I used Shilen barrels that I turned down to fit into the 20 gauge barrels.

I had to also install bushings for the firing pins that had to be reduced in diameter and protusion. Some people weld up the firing pin holes and just drill and ream smaller ones, but I never care much for welding on actions if I can help it.

As for the barrels. I turned them up so that they fit snuggly at the camber and muzzle end. I turned a bit of relief in the barrel for the middle section to make the fitting and regualting easier and faster.

What I did to regulate them was, I intalled both barrels in the shotgun and shot them at 50 yards on a large sheet of plywood using the existing bead sight. The left barrel's 2 rounds impacted about a foot high and a foot to the right, closer than I though they would. So I marked the insert how it was indexed in the barrel. I shot 2 rounds in the right barrel to see where they impacted, and they were about 2 feet to the right and about 6 inches low. I went ahead and decided the left barrel was close enough to the rifles line of sight that I left it alone and went ahead and timed it to the barrel. The other barrel I tried indexing to see if I could get it to hit any closer. By indexing I was only able to bet it about 6 inches closer. Not close enough. I marked the barrel before I removed it and went ahead and timed it by also pinning it and cutting a slot.

The next step could have been avoided if I had turned the muzzle of the inserts off center by about .030 or so. This would have allowed me to index the barrels until they merged. but it was to late for that. So I built up the right barrel at the muzzle by soldering on steel shim stock and removing material from the opposite side until I got the barrel to shoot within about 5" of the left barrel at 50 yds. This was close enough for my buddy. So I left it at that. Installed the sights and gave it to him.

Since it was the first time I had done such a conversion I just removed the ejectors and we figured we would worry about it later. My buddy didn't want to wait for me to make the ejectors for it so I ended up cutting a slot where the ejectors would have gone and he used a small screw driver to pop out the fired cases. This was a long time ago and he just wanted a double that would shoot and wasn't worried about any ejection just as long as the cases came out.

Their would be several things I would do different if I did it again. One would have been maching the OD of the muzzle end off-center to make it easier to regulate and second I would have soldered the barrels in permanently.

This was about ten years ago. It was a fun learing experience since I had never done it before but I haven't done it since.

A quick search on Google should reveal that there are a few companies that offer inserts for shotgun barrels. But, I would only shoot low pressure cartridges out of a conversion like a 405 Win, 45-70, or 375 Win.

By converting I was talking about cutting the barrels off at the end of the chambers and using the remainder as a monobloc. I am going to build a 500/416 NE on a 300 series action similar to what Heym uses in their Model 55 O/U rifles. You lose the shotgun use but you get a much better double rifle.

I'm not too interested in going the insert route as it still looks like a shotgun when you're through.

If you ask this question on the gunsmith forum you will get more specific responses; Jeffe just did a side by side in 577/550. There have been some nice efforts illustrated.

quote:

Jeffe just did a side by side in 577/550.

Did I miss the pictures? I knew he had a project in the works.

It's not finished; it's regulated and shoots but he still has to do the ribs.

quote:

Originally posted by tiggertate:
It's not finished; it's regulated and shoots but he still has to do the ribs.

Thanks.

There's actually quite a good book out on the subject. It's "Building Double Rifles on Shotgun Actions", by W. Ellis Brown. It shows the whole process in pictures, has a lot of useful design info and covers everything from makind your own monoblocks to ribs and firing pin bushing.

Thanks for all the input.

The idea of turning the ends off center is a fantastic one. The indexing of the inserts is a clever solution.

Art, thanks for the reference to the book. I will see what I come up with. This just looks like a good way to spend many hours.

Judson did an awesome 450 no2 a while back, I have seen and played with it... Me Like!