ORIGINAL: dkhunter8383
I bought a used shotgun from gander mountain, and took it out to the field only to find that the choke tube could not be removed. I brought it back to their gun smith, and he said he had to take a torch to it, and heat the $%@& out of it before he could take it out. Could be worth a try and save you a little green.
Heating the $%@& out of a firearm barrel can change the strength of the metal. You are performing a heat treating process on the barrel. If done improperly -- and almost certainly any such heat administered outside of an engineer-designed heat treating facility would be improper -- I would think the barrel would be weakened. Comments by others on this subject?
If you want to GENTLY heat the barrel to a modest temperature -- such as a temperature you can touch for a second with your hand without burning it -- that might be OK. But you are literally playing with fire, in more ways than one. Suppose this heat treatment makes the metal of your gun brittle and shooting causes the barrel to shatter under a load from a fired shot shell? Believe me, you won't get the manufacturer to stand behind that product when it has been reverse heat treated in that way.