doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - Steel inserts for an old Darne

Hello,
I will make a pair of inserts to use a very pitted 12 ga barrels from an old Darne shotgun.
The idea is to make a 12 to 20 ga tube about 1 foot long, to avoid the heavy pitted area in the barrels.
My question is, the steel that it is locally available are:

-1518 carbon steel or
-T-304 stainless steel.

Could you tell me what material is better for the purpose?

I will work the material in a lathe.

Thank you for your replies.

Best,

Jose

What do the barrel walls measure? Every Darne at my house, 3 at the moment, is over .050 wall. I’ve measured guns that had .020-.030 thicker walls, too. If the gun saw double or triple proof, when it was a new gun, you might not need to worry too much, if you feed it light hunting loads.

Let’s see a photo of the flats and the tubes where they enter the flats.

Best,
Ted

I cut a slot in the inserts,
welded up some 12 gauge extractors,
and refitted them to 16 gauge.
All now work as a normal 16 gauge

If you use any kind of inserts, trybefore buying. I have a set of Brily's (the fits all version). an older set of another brand, and chamber adapters of several brands. Only the old ones work in 2-1/2" chambers and they were custom ordered for the gun.

I think you should really consider honing/reaming the barrels. I am refurbishing an old R-11 16 ga right now. The bores were horrible looking. I lengthened the chambers so I could us inserts if I wanted. I used a long forcing cone reamer to helps remove some of the worst pitting. I then used an expanding reamer to remove about 0.015 from the bores (diameter). After honing and polishing the wall thicknesses were still thicker than the bulk of the doubles I shoot.

This is a common case of worrying about originality, when in actuality the serious pitting will detract more from value than a barrel opened up, clean and still with good wall thickness.

Do a lot of measurement before hand. It is hard to hone heavy pits out smoothy and reaming to size then honing is usually better. I have found that I was always surprised, however, how little removal can be needed to remove some horrible looking pits.

Hello gentlemen:

I have some advances in my DARNE proyect: I bought 1517 steel tube and machine with a lathe a pair of 45 centimeters (about 18 inches) inserts.

Now I am giving the inserts the last adjustments and I hope I can permanently glue the inserts in the old and damaged barrels.
My question is, what kind of glue do you recomend to use?

I have in mind 2 types:

1.- 275 dymetylacrilate ester (I think you name it red Locktite) for permanent gluing of automotive parts and
2.- Industrial epoxy type glue (2 compound parts that mix together and starts to cure in about 30 minutes.

The tolerances that I obtain are really tight, in most parts there are about 001-002" between barrels and inserts, so I am concern about the use of option #2 because the glue is so thick.

I really want a permanent fixing of the inserts inside the barrels!

Any knowledge advise from you?

Best regards,

Jose

The barrel should be concentric if you turn it between centers.
Mikr

You might want to read about how a good gunsmith does a similar repair operation. It would seem this repair was done fairly recently ( less than a couple decades ago).

https://vicknairgunsmithing.blogspot.com/2022/12/correcting-excess-headspace-in-parker.html


Best,
Ted