Shotgun Projects- 870's

 This was a project I did a bit back.  I have 3 sons, all of which are are out of the house and one their own (at the time the youngest was about to graduate college).  For Christmas I decided they all needed a quality 'Home Defense" shotgun.  To that end I bought some police trade in 870's to 'rebuild/refurbish'.  

This is the finished product:

 

Now, some of you are looking at those and saying "wait a minute, you said 3 sons." Indeed I did, one of those is now mine. 

The bottom shotgun is an 870 "Magnum" made for police. It has a 20" smooth bore barrel with rifle sights.  That particular shotgun was given to me by my Father-in-Law. It had the plain parked finish and black plastic butt stock. The forend was painted black.  It looked all tactical and had fiber optic sights.  

The other 3 were agency trade ins I bought from GT Distributers. The top 2 were both early Express models.  Those early models were Remington's first steps down the lower price point road.  They had all the fit and finish of the regular blued steel Wingmaster, with the exception of the metal finish which was some sort of parkerized type exterior.  Those had no magazine tube dimples and were still as smooth as any Wingmaster. 

The third from the top was a real unicorn.  It is marked as a Wingmaster TB, meaning it originally started life as a "Trap Model B".  The trap models had very nice wood and beautiful blue finishes.  I contacted Remington and found the serial number dated to 1955.  By the time I found it for sale, it had come to belong to an agency and had a mix master set of parts, typical of agency weapons.  The barrel was another 20" smooth bore with rifle sights, which looking at the barrel code dated to the 80's.  The buttstock was beautiful grained walnut.  The forend was from a later 870 Wingmaster style with the fleur-dis-lise pressed checkering.  

Overall I cleaned them all, replaced all the springs made sure all of them had the "Flex-tab" conversions done.  Interestingly the Trap model had a standard shell lifter, and none of the internal modifications to bolt parts but I couldn't get it to lock up or jam with a shell on the carrier, the problem the flex-tab was designed to fix.  The 2 guns with rifle sights got sets of tritium front and back.  The plain bead Express models got Wilson Combat ghost rings with tritium.  With the exception of the Trap model, they all got coated in Norrell's Moly-Resin.  The police model butt stock was swapped for wood and the forend stripped.  On the trap model I turned the forend down to a "corn cob" style that pretty much matches my other 1955 Wingmaster. 

It was lots of fun and the boys all really liked them.  I figure everybody needs an 870 to repel borders as needed.   Now I'm really wanting to do the same to an 1100.