Remington 870

[Photoguy67]

I inherited a Remington 870 and I honestly don't know much about shotguns. It came with an extended magazine but I am considering registering it as a short barrel shotgun and shortening the barrel to 13.5 inches, but (always a but) as I said, I don't know much about shotguns. Is there any pitfalls I may run into changing out the extended feed tube to a standard capacity one, or is it pretty straight forward? and what parts are needed besides the spring? Thanks for any help!

[derf]

There is one issue in changing out the extended tube for a standard magazine cap. The length of the spring is shorter on the standard tube. The extended tube is actually a nut with a longer spring and a tube attached. Install original spring and cap. Easy fix! 

[DO-TN]

Before you go chopping up a 870 there are a few things to consider. Remington as we have known it no longer exsists. Parts are becomming increasingly difficult to find and more expensive. They are no longer the prolific sub-$200 pawnshop shotguns they used to be. Then there are variants of the 870. If this is a Wingmaster, is may be worth a good chunk. An express, less so. If it is an 870P it may actually be collectible esoecially if marked to a department.

That said it's yours, do as you wish. 

Derf is correct above, the only consideration you have is that there were two barrel nut retaining methods used on 870's.

Method A used a detent that interfaced with a ring of notches in the barrel nut. Gave you distinctive clicks as you tighten it down. 

Method B used a spring cap that locked into two indents on the magazine tube and had a ring on the end that "clicked" into a raised section deeper inside the nut.

Since you have an extended tube, I would think you have method A. You just have to make sure the new barrel nut and spring cap you buy are the correct ones or your barrel nut won't lock in correctly.

[Photoguy67]

Thanks for the quick replies, I still haven't fully decided to sbs it, as I also have an inexpensive side by side that I am leaning more toward chopping, not from value stand point but more toward fun of shooting.

Thanks again!

[Handsome Rob]

Also, bear in mind that if you chop down any shotgun, you'll be losing any choke. You'll essentially be creating a cylinder bore. Lots of places will thread & install removable chokes, but that'll add considerably to the cost. Double the barrels, double the cost. If you stick to a short barreled cylinder bore, you'll be effectively cutting down the usable range by an incredible amount. For purely HD work, not an issue, but for a fun gun, 20yds is going to frustrate you.  

[Patton]

I’m an 870 armorer if I can help with anything. There are some concerns with thin barrel when you chop one, and because of timing concerns it’s not practical to do a barrel swap. I don’t know that I would ever bother to chop an old 870.  I would buy a $500 Tac 14 as a base for your SBS. 

[RED333]

11 hours ago, Patton said:

I would buy a $500 Tac 14 as a base for your SBS. 

This is the best idea.

[xtriggerman]

back when I was a kid, I ended up with a Hoppins & Allen 12g Hammer DBL. It was old but had steel tubes rather than twist lamination's. Problem was, it had a big dent in one of the barrel and certainly wasnt safe to shoot that side. So I took it to a gun smith to see if he could fix it. He said the gun was not fixable but I really wanted to shoot that gun so I cut it down to below the dent. That put the tubes at just over 15 inches. I have to say, talk about kick! Shooting that rear trigger was a terror to the finger nail since the recoil would smash the front of your trigger finger into the joint where the front trigger met the trigger guard bow. No matter how you fired it, it would bloody the nail & skin joint every time. Only thing worse is if you made the mistake of putting both fingers in there to fire a barrel.  It had 2 3/4" chambers so it wasnt like running shells threw a 2 5/8ths guns.  Back in those days I wasnt worried about any laws on the books. Then I went to Gunsmith school and learned what a dent slug could do! Started not trusting gunsmiths that day..... I would have loved to have that gun fixed, but a guy at work wanted it more than me years latter so I ended up with a Scott stereo receiver out of a trade. So much for cutting down light weight DBL's