Porting your own barrel

Mr. Longbeard · 06-09-2006, 06:17 AM

Know this guy that works in a armory... Anyhow he orders this barrel porting gaget... He told me he was going to port his own barrel... the gun is a Marlin bolt actionslug shot gun. with rifeling in the barrel... He said that all he did was put the jig on the barrel and start drilling holes...

The job looked ok but do you think this would affect accuracy???

Paul L Mohr · 06-09-2006, 03:14 PM

I would think you would have to polish the barrel when you were done to get rid of any burs. I might try it on a smooth, but I don't know about a rifled barrel.

It wouldn't be worth the risk of ruining a gun to me, that is for sure. I have shot ported shotguns, and while it helps it is not anything overly dramatic. I think you could accomplish the same thing with a really good recoil pad and adding some weight.

Paul

longrifle1000 · 06-09-2006, 03:19 PM

My Mossberg 695 is ported, and it does absolutely nothing except make it a lot louder. And like Paul mentioned, too much of a chance of screwing it up.

Judson · 06-09-2006, 03:45 PM

There is lots of hype out there about porting and muzzel brakes. I have been experimenting with brake design for 15 years and have even enlisted the help of an engineer who did supper sonic wind tunnel testing and found out some very intresting things. First and most important is that angled ports and such do not help at all. Gas moving above the speed of sound does not like to turn corners so all we are concerned with is the frontal areas of the holes. The speed of sound does go up with tempriture however this has little effect on the gasses inside a barrel. The biggest reason the porting on a shot gun barrel does so little is the barrel is thin enough that you have very little frontal area for the gas to work against. As for trying to do it on your own, unless you are a machineist and know about stress and pressures it would be best to farm the job out to some one who does or you at best could mess up your gun.

jcchartboy · 06-09-2006, 05:04 PM

The only legitimate reason I can see why he might want to do it is so that he can say he did...

Other than that I would highly recomend against it....

jeepkid · 06-09-2006, 05:17 PM

I just got my 1100 done (smooth bore) and it help with barrel jump. Not much for kick though. I would do it myself anyday of the week. I sent this one to a gunsmith just to see how many holes, size, angle, etc... I would definatly to do myself on a smooth bore, as for a rifled barrel, just look in Cabelas and get a Comp-N-Choke choke tube. I have heard great things about them for slug guns.

Briman · 06-10-2006, 07:49 AM

I wouldn't touch a shotgun barrel myself. They are made as thin as possible to save weight and it doesn't take much to screw one up and make it dangerous to shoot.

PurcellSportingGoods · 06-10-2006, 07:51 AM

not sure if I would mess with that myself.....I never noticed a difference on between my ported barrels and non-ported....