Kelsey Cooter wrote:Any of you blokes had a lever gun shortened?
I'm currently borrowing a wild old girl that I'll probably buy from a friend. It's a 94 chambered in 44-40 and has an 11.5" barrel. It's a piece of crap but impressively accurate and alot of fun.
It got me thinking it would be cool to cut down a miroku 1892 carbine barrel to 13" (for an overall length of 770mm) to have a great little farm gun / pigging gun.
As far as cost goes do you think I'm fairly on the money here or am I way off?
1hr to disassemble
1hr to cut down and crown barrel
1hr to cut new front sight dovetail
1hr to cut down mag tube
1hr to reblue
1hr to reassemble and admire what a cool little carbine I've just made
6hrs @ $100/hr =
$600 total cost?
No idea on costs, but are prices still down around the $100 per hour level?
I don't know if you're allowed to do your own work up there, but I shortened the mag tube on my JW21 (Winchester 9422) down to 5rds, very easy job.
Cutting the barrel is also very easy with a saw, and crowning it takes a few minutes in the lathe, if you want to bother - I would shoot it first and see if it needs crowning at all. I wouldn't go down that short though, depending on chambering, I'd keep it in the 16" to 18" region. .44 Mag would still have some real punch with a shorter barrel though. Cutting the barrel really short though might require removing the barrel from the receiver to be able to re-crown it properly. Just file it square, deburr it and see how it shoots, then cold blue the cut. You can screw a front sight on rather than cut a new dovetail if you prefer - Brownells lists dozens of different types of sights.
My '92 .357 Magnum is 24" and takes 12rds. Shortening the barrel to 16" brings capacity down to 8rd. Shortening it to 13" would make it a 5rd tube - based on the .357 Henry Mare's Leg. My rifle is 1080mm overall, with the old-style curved butt stock - the more modern butt stock makes the rifle about 30mm shorter.