This is something I have done on personal guns… wondering what the majority thinks about it.
First thing… the difference between an okay shotgun and a great shotgun is the barrel - this is where the money is.
So, let’s talk about back-bored barrels. This is a highly contested process - I will say right up front I am a proponent of the process. There are a lot of people on the internet that say it has no merit and serves no purpose; their primary argument however is that if it was beneficial, major shotgun makers would do it. Well, they do.
Back-boring has its major benefit when you chop down a barrel… as most of you know, when you cut off even a few inches of a shotgun barrel, you cut off the choke and you are left with a straight cylinder bore - normally .730 on U.S. made shotguns. On these barrels, if you run a .740 back-bore reamer down the barrel, stopping just short of the muzzle, you make what is effectively an improved cylinder choke in the barrel and restore a lot of the barrel’s performance. This is a key part of Hans Vang’s magic.
So, we have back-boring… then lengthening the forcing cone and polishing the bore… and of course porting. All is good! Or was good… until Federal came along with Flight Control Wads.
If you don’t already know, the Federal FCW differs from a regular shotgun wad in that it does not expand like the petals of a flower, rather it is a solid tube with little flip out “air brake” vanes at the back that retard the wad and let the shot column “slip” out the front - it stays with the shot column for some distance and is very, very effective. So much so, that the FCW all but eliminates the need for fancy barrel mojo. The only down side to FCW is that they do not like porting, wad strippers or tight chokes.
Another problem with FCW rounds is they can be hard to get and a bit spendy… so when I build a shotty I do a multi-purpose barrel, like this:
I back-bore the barrel to .740 all the way through, lengthen the forcing cone, then polish the bore. I cut the barrel for the Browning IP Choke (one of the big companies that back-bores barrels) and use Carlson flush chokes - this gives you a nice barrel with a cylinder or improved cylinder choke to shoot FCW rounds… or, you can go to a tighter choke to shoot “whatever” buckshot rounds you can find. This is for shorter, HD and duty shotguns - Remmy 870, Mossy 500/590 - and it naturally adds to the cost of the gun. But not that much really.
So, is this something that you think would be worthwhile as a service for your HD or duty gun?