Nice job. I've made my poorman's double similarly, but I used (2) barrel inserts for .45-70 and mounted sights using a rare earth magnet set, so I can go back to using it as a shotgun by replacing the chokes and removing the inserts and sights. For the ranges I'd be using it for, it goes back to zero pretty good. ;) My lock is a hammer version, because I love the hammer design. ;)
Nice job, I bought the book on converting shotguns about 10 years ago, but I've always been too busy with other projects. I'd like to find a trim 20 gauge side-by-side and slip some rifle tubes in in 30 30 or 35 Remington. I even thought about doing a double 45 Colt! They'll kill feral Hogs in the bush with no problem.
Great job and what a good idea. I have a Stoger double 12 gage with 18 inch barrels and always fancy that "if it were only a double rifle." Fun entertaining video; thanks!
I have a couple of old double barrels that I've wanted to do this to. Well, one I want to put sleeves in and make it a proper double rifle (albeit for we un-rich, LOL). I love the quality of your work! Amazing! Two thumbs up from the US of A!
That really came out looking way cool. The stock, the sights, the whole gun is beautiful. I enjoyed watching this video and I would have liked to have seen the stock repairs as well. Outstanding.
For that last couple years I have been doing what I call modern musketry , using shotguns and modern slugs to shoot as accurate as possible, it is a lot more challenging that using rifle at distance. Thanks for your videos.
nice gun, my side by side had the same problem with plastic hulls not dropping free. If you take a fired hull from each chamber glue Thousand grit sandpaper to them. put a bolt through the primer pocket .oil the paper reinsert and lap your chambers with a hand drill .they will slide out easily it's how the cowboy action shooters get them to drop free. brass shells are great. but depending on which kind you get. You will not be able to use smokeless powder
No matter the size of the choke by the time the slug reaches the muzzle it's preheated and will be soft enough to pass safely through the gentle incline. Snap gages aren't easy to find and most calipers can measure the muzle giving you an instant adequate reading. But: "I really like your milling and fitting abilaties and how you cosmetically improver this piece." Nice work.
That is absolutely cool and inspiring! I live in the northern Rockies of America . I can't say I need a short range deer gun but by golly if I was to build one like yours I'd have it if I need it. Very cool gun! Looking forward to the brass cases.
is there a halfway between a double rifle that looks like a double barreled shotgun and a double-barreled shotgun that looks like a double rifle in real life?
There is a company that builds double rifled 20g slug guns.i can't remember the name right now.but they come with rifled sites and a optic mount I always wanted one in 16g for deer drives. The 20g would work just fine if I ever find one for sale.
You saved a piece of history and put your own mark on it. Too cool, in a hundred years some future forgotten weapons historian will be talking about it. Looks beautiful.
I've shot them out of 20", 22" and 30" and no real difference. For slugs its more about how tight the bore is on the gun. You need the wadding to have a certain amount of compression around the slug in order for it to fit snuggly down the bore. Too loose and it will not be accurate (i.e. in a gun that has been back bored)
any "up close" work is probably better suited to the shorter barrel lengths such as 20" or 22", but that has less to do with the performance of the round and more to do with handling in thick bush/scrub. i personally have a 30" barreled under/over that works for pretty much everything, although i wouldn't dream of even trying to swing that thing in the bush. for that stuff i stick to the 45-70.
First off, nice work on the double barrel, second, I have never considered using one of my six shotguns as a rifle. And that may be because my favorite is a 1906 Le Fever Nitro double barrel, I have to confess, it is old and I worry about over preasure in my favorite old girl. However I certainly could try that in my Beretta Silver Pidgeon, my Stevens Savage, Itheca Featherlight, Mossberg 835, RIA VR-60, or TriStar KRX...
Good project. I (living in the United States) have done similar projects, usually with less artistic effect. At one point I had an old L. C. Smith shotgun (Damascus or laminated barrels) and of - at the time - insignificant value, so (having an extra set of barrels that were dented at the nineteen inch area) I cut them off and used it as a 'cowboy' guns. I did use rather light loads and all brass shotgun shells. I had a total of about 25 brass cases and reloaded them with black powder (actually modern nitrocellulose powder but burning with black powder rates) and found them perfect for the use. I didn't do slugs, Bird shot with a heavy paper over wad and sealed with candle wax. Good work on the sight modification, metal and wood work, and the recoil pad. The only thing to which I object is your language. I find much clearer and less objectionable speech is more enjoyable.
I have always been enamoured by the double rifle even though here in America they are just not that popular. I have an old 16 gauge side by side I'm thinking about tinkering with.
Way cool looking Shotty . Extremely nice machine work. Great to keep an old gun useful and just FUN . I would be proud to have a " custom double rifle " . Canada .
I really enjoyed your video! I made one four years back with a Russian short barreled 12 gauge, with 45-70 sleeved barrel liners machined to fit the 12 gauge. It made for an awesome ( inexpensive ) double rifle.
This was sweet. My dad did the same thing with a 12ga he had that got damaged. Cut it down to get rid of what was bent and the same style sight put on. Years later i got it off him and had it threaded for chokes so now I can use it as my turkey gun in the spring and a dogging gun for deer in the fall. It has ejectors to.
That's awesome and I'll admit Im Extremely jealous of the build you did an amazing job if you were here in the states id hire you to build one in a heartbeat awesome work
I bought a number of chamber inserts for a single-shot break action shotgun - mostly handgun calibers, as well as a .410 insert that is longer - as an experiment. Of course, while the chamber pressures of the handgun calibers - .44 Magnum, etc. - are much higher than those of a shotgun, the total energy in a handgun cartridge is low compared to a "double rifle" cartridge like a .458 magnum or .375 H&H, that you'd find double rifles chambered in. Nonetheless, I've wondered if a sleeve (a to-the-muzzle sleeve) that fit a 12 or 20 gauge double, but which was chambered in a serious round would overload the locking mechanism of the action. Looking at the strength of the pivot arm of a double-barrel, it looks pretty robust - but that says nothing about the alloys used, the yield strength of the weakest point, etc. I've been looking for a double rifle to examine on that count, but not successfully yet. Seems like it would be a versatile field piece to have, say, a .338 or .375 (or both) in barrel sleeves available to insert into a 12 gauge double, that could be removed if you wanted to use shotshells. What's your take on the strength of a double-barrel's action? Would such a weapon be safe?
Man that's amazing I've been wanting to do this to a old stoeger shotgun I have its 28inch barrel with removable chokes so I got some rifled chokes and I'm going to see how it shoots some 3 inch slugs and I can still use it for birds or coyotes here in the states with a simple choke change. Thank you for showing how you built the sights now I just need to find a gunsmith that can replicate it
For your surprise in India many hunting enthusiast who were not so rich, used to hunt deer and even tiger with 12 bore Spherical Ball cartridges before the recreational hunting ban imposed in 1972.
I love the splinter forend. Really nice job. Regulation is tricky, glad it worked out. I have an old savage 24 I need to figure out a way to regulate, unfortunately I don’t have your skills!
Thank you for this video mate, I found it really interesting, especially the techniques for the sights. I love all my SxS shotties but a few of them are a bit rough and this gives me all sorts of ideas. As for your language, crikey there's some sensitive blokes out there......................
Got a couple of shotguns that would make nice doubles. One even has a Greener cross-bolt. How bloody cool is that? Always wanted to do a build precisely as you did and now will. Thanks for the inspiration.
Interesting project. Near as I can tell here in the states one can just buy a coach gun, buy some Brenekes, and make a trip to the range... at least in Indiana.
Decades ago I held a very nimble factory-built short barrel Beretta, similar to your configuration. Full stock with a buttplate, not a recoil pad, and barrels longer than what the Sicilians would call a "Lupara". That Beretta might have been a model 409 in 16 ga. with an under-barrel sling mount.
Rocky Mountain Cartridges makes every caliber of shotgun hull out of brass, also in many lengths as well and not those thin cheap ones that are most common, they use regular plastic hull 12 gauge wads!
Very cool! You've got some serious gunsmithing skills. I grew up shooting a Stevens/Savage Model 311,12 Ga. Side by side, 30" full choke. I've shot tens of thousands of rounds thru that gun, so many that I've retired it for safety reasons. I would love to have a double barrel slug gun like yours, or a double rifle, and one day I will. My current favorite gun is a Winchester pre-64 style model 70 safari in .375 H&H. To date I've shot 2 pigs and an 11 ft gator with it. I hit exactly where I aimed and none of the animals I shot took another step, all three were (as they say over in Holopaw) DRT, Dead Right There. Lol. That rifle was my retirement gift to myself after 34-yrs working for the USAF as an ARFF Firefighter. Sorry for rambling, I had a knee replaced last week and I'm high as hell on oxycodone.
Damn, I have a 1900 Remington sxs with the same idea in mind. Been on the back burner for about a year. Came across it night before last and this came up on my feed today. Must be a sign lol
Hate to sprinkle on your parade ... but Butch Searcy (an independent thinking American from Boron, Commiefornia) was building these many decades ago from the Browning BSS Sporter Shotgun. They are still available on the used market and are a prized possession. There is no evidence suggesting that a problem has ever existed with the product. Butch has been making new issue Double Rifles ever since and again, these are prized possessions.
Love this and all your work. I also have a la sorda, but it has a dint in one barrel. Is this something you could fix, or recommend someone around Bendigo to do it?
Hey mate, it depends on how big the dint is, where on the barrels it is etc. Feel free to DM me on either of my instagram pages (@fhuck_outdoors or @hical_firearms) or on FB and send some pics etc. I should be able to point you in the right direction.
I used to shoot cowboy action and I found polishing my chambers of my double barrel shotguns allowed me to break open the gun and with a quick move, pitch the empty shells over my shoulder.
Not with this gun. It has dogtooth strikers and not disk-set strikers. Too much time to change that over, and too dangerous without them. There is an inherent risk on blowing a primer when using centre fire rifle cartridges in a shotgun as the firing pin sizes are quite different. Obviously companies sell barrel liners for shotguns, pistol cartridges work well, but anything centre fire rifle comes with a warning. If I was to convert to centre fire rifle, I would make sure its a shotgun with disk-set strikers, that way I can ensure the correct firing pin size and protrusion. Disk-set strikers also act as a valve in case of a ruptured primer so gasses dont go back into the head of the stock and blow it up.
This may sound odd, but a .410 double can actually chamber .44 magnum AND .444 Marlin. I imagine the barrels could be rifled if you need long range accuracy. Mine does pretty well out to about 60 yards.
Nicely done, I have only worked on pop guns as here you can have a small game airgun (limited energy) without a ticket, I like .25 and in carbine form I have some factory carbines and made a few as it's not a common form nor calibre, anyhow very nice double gun!
Love your work, mate. I had a similar idea of running an Akkar Churchill O/U as a double slug gun, but unfortunately in the manual it recommends using only birdshot size loads.
There could be a reason for that; bore size bing one of them. Not all manufacturers make their shotguns with the same bore size. I have two German shotguns that are actually 13 gauge! That's how tight they are.
Loved those videos bro. Here in USA we have restrictions on barrel length , but you are in the margins with that gun. Great use of an old box lock. I would have loved to see it in paper at 50 meters . We don’t run dogs for deer except one state I think allows it??? Not sure. But, would like to see a video of you and your dogs on a deer. Great stuff, thx
We have 16” minimum barrel length in most states, overall length rule in others. I did a follow up video shooting this at 50m, and also have a video coming out shortly showing it shooting a deer shoulder.
Nice work those sights make that gun sexy as hell. I'm doing a similar build up here in the states. I hacked my Remington 1889 12 gauge hammer double to 20". Still thinking about sights, maybe a flip down rear.
This action is only proofed to 12,800PSI. The proportional back thrust of a rifle cartridge would not be safe. Plus this action has dogtooth strikers and not disk-set strikers, which adds to the danger of a pierced primer blowing back into the action.
That's very cool I did the same thing about 20 years ago. I wasn't happy with it. I really wanted a double rifle. I started building double rifles shortly after using shotgun actions. I have built a 450 nitro express double rifle , a 416 and am currently building a 45-70 now. It's not that complicated and even at current prices I can build them for under 1000 dollars.
@@A.R.American1 Not many videos at all. There is a good series on building a 375 flanged double but I had to watch it on mute because the music was terrible haha.
Nice many years ago I transformed an abused .410 double shotgun into a double rifle. Didn’t do the amount of work you did for your sights, I got an old set of Parker Hale sights from Sarco , with a little work they look (and work) just fine.
I Do this with a old feathetlite hammerless side by side 20 guage grouse gun! Its light weight and stupid accurate with slugs , some of the heavy slugs like the Breneke are devastating out of it
Sandblasting previously polished barrels is not a good idea. Plus it’s not necessary for removing enamel paint. Now you’ve given yourself a lot of extra work to return the barrels back to a polished state.
Not only did I sand blast them, I sandblasted them again after soldering. Shock horror! Either way they needed to be repolished to get rid of the excess tin/lead solder. Thanks for you concern though.
Hey mate what's the process of shortening a shotgun barrel legally?. Do we have to apply for a modification before hand or does the gunsmith do all the paper work for us. Im in Queensland and Have an old one here with a stupid long barrel I wouldn't mind building one so it's usable.
I cant speak for the QLD rules but they are likely the same as Vic. If the firearm is to be modified in a way that changes its category (eg going from cat A to cat B) then you need to apply for permission first before the work can be started. If its modified in a way that changes its registration (i.e. change of caliber) then the gunsmith needs to submit paperwork. If its modified in a way that does not change its registration or its category, then no paperwork is needed.
@@fhckoutdoors sounds like a mess in a royal pain-in-the-ass! We are frustrated here in the states by the constant attack on our Firearms rights, but thank God it isn't this bad yet!
OMG! Absolutely lovely bit of work there. Loved the video...lost count of the number of "phucks" you put out, but, yeah, great job on both the shotty and the video!😅
I've often wondered why somebody doesn't build a choke tube that instead of "choking" is actually rifled? The old H&H Paradox guns were build just this way, but instead of choke tubes the last few inches of the bore was rifled. This allowed you to use shot that wouldn't be dispersed into a donut pattern as in a gun where the entire bore was rifled, but that short bit of rifling at the end would stabilize a slug well enough to shoot out to several hundred yards. Those Paradox guns were built with bores ranging from 28 gauge all the way up to 12. Your English gentleman could use a light gun for partridge around the estate and still take a deer if he came across one. In India or Africa he could also use the shotgun for birds and still take the larger game there. I doubt the typical double shotgun off the rack (w/ choke tubes) would be regulated well enough for long range slugs, but a single barrel of any kind would just require the addition of sights as you've done above.
I was always baffled why double shotgun manufacturers had largely avoided making slug/buck guns with sights in a poor man's sxs rifle. There have been numerous budget friendly shotguns like Stevens, and in the modern day Chinese and Turkish variants. I'm sure the economics were not good for development but today it likely would sell better with a large fan base of double rifles which are otherwise out of reach price wise
Was the shotgun made in Spain. It looks exactly like a 20 ga. shotgun (Model 63) purchased over 50 years ago that was made in Spain and imported into the US by Davidson Firearms Co. Greensboro, NC. Not sure if they are in existence today.
I have been looking for something similar. I would love to have a shotgun/rifle combo. Good gun for whatever wants to show up when I am afield. I unfortunately am in the same situation as you and haven't been able to find anything in my price range for sale. I keep looking for a cheap one to do a project gun but nothing yet. Thanks for the video.
