DHE barrels
 

Can a DHE barrel be turned into a DH?

I’m asking this because I bought a repro 28 barrel to put on my VH 28. The VH was my great grandfathers, it’s been at Turnbull being redone and they said the chamber walls are thin. If not I have a repro 28 I could swap forearms with but it would be simpler if I didn’t have to. I want to use this barrel for everyday shooting and use the original with some light loads once or twice a year, like opening day dove and a quail hunt or two.

Thank you

Did Turnbull not want to do this work for you? Is the original gun a 0 frame?

Just got word from them about the same time I found these barrels. I shoot sporting clays weekly and had thought about getting another barrel anyway. What do you know about chamber sleeves? Not full barrel. I saw the Briley offers that.

The short answer is yes, the repro barrels can be altered to be extracotor. But, as Aaron asked, is your Great grandfathers gun an 0 frame 28? That would put the brakes on any possibility of using them. What, or where, specifically, did Turnbull indicate the chambers measure thin? Were the chambers lengthened? If the gun is an 0 frame, there's still a fair bit of meat in the wall at the beginning of the 'new' forcing cone. Don't roll over and play dead just yet.

I don't know how you would get a 0 frame 28 to have thin chamber walls. Must be a 00 frame.

It can. But a new extractor would need to be made. Or some modifications be made. And the roll joint needs to be changed, as well as the trips removed. It is not an super easy ordeal, but it can happen.

Thank you for that info. Not as easy as I thought. Think I’ll use my repro forearm

I had that gun about a month before I shipped it off in January of 2023. I was so excited to finally get it by sheer stupidity on my part I paid no attention to frame size. I just wanted to be able to shoot it. I did get it’s research letter. 28 inch barrel and weighs 5 1/2 lbs. would that put it in 00 range? I can’t remember if it had the lightning strikes.

Who is this gunsmith who has had your gun for almost two years without telling you what he is doing to it?

Turnbull, he has told me what they are doing, the problem is he said the barrel is thin. NowI’m trying to remember if it’s o or oo. I have a repro barrel and if I’m lucky and it’s oo my next quest is to either find a forearm with ejectors or turn the repro barrel into extractors. He didn’t mention anything in a way of a fix for barrel. I know from what I gathered from email that it’s thin in the chambers which makes me wonder if a chamber sleeve might fix it

Got it back. Looks awesome. It’s a 00 so repro barrel should work

I would like to know more about chamber sleeves, if there is such a thing.

When done it is basically soldering in sleeves to the chambers to reduce the gauge down to a smaller gauge. It is similar to the installation of gaugemates or briley tubes, just without the tube in the bore.
I personally would never do it to a gun, it does not make much sense to me and I would think the performance would be hindered some. Tubing the gun with brileys would be a better solution in my book.

The only time I ever heard it done that made any sense was a 14ga had it's chambers sleeved to 16ga.

Jeff, I remember your post where you said Turnbull indicated the chamber wall was thin, I don't recall whether it was them that said something about chamber sleeves, but what was their thought process? Sleeving the chambers to .410? That would be ill thought out, as the .410 charge, wad and shot, would never fill the 28ga bores to build any sort of adequate pressure. it woudn't be of any use beyond 15-20 yards. Sleeving them with same bore sleeves wouldn't yield any increase in the wall section either.
Unless someone lengthened the chambers to 2/75" or 3", I can't see how the chamber wall was any less than when the gun was made.

I don't think we have heard the entire story.

What he's saying is that the width ecross the breech end of the barrels is too narrow (not thin) to properly mate with the width of the breech face of the frame.





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His original gun is an extractor gun, so there's no need to remove any trip pins, because there aren't any. Since he's talking about making the repro barrels into extractor barrels, there's no need to replacce the joint roll.

Jeff has already said the gun is a 00 frame. That said, the joint between the 00 repro barrels and the 00 frame is not a guarantee of a smooth joint. Repros may have a consistent bolster width, but original Parker bolster widths vary.

Why I messaged you. I think I remember reading over here somewhere that a lot of sub gage guns were made thinner than modern guns. I shot her yesterday with a recipe I found with only 5000 psi. She did crush some clays. The chamber sleeve was just something I saw Briley did and was curious what it was since the man at Turnbull said the chamber walls were too thin to lengthen to 2 3/4. When I sent the gun off I thought I needed the longer chambers, since then I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t, since most low pressure loads I find for 2 3/4 you end up stacking Cheerios and other fillers in to take up space but fit perfectly in 2 1/2.
Btw thank you again for your advice from when I messaged you.

Bill I was hair on fire when they told me walls were thin and the guy at Turnbull him hawd on if i could still shoot her. Since I’ve calmed down after talking to several people giving them the wall thickness numbers I was told. It’s a 00 28 inch barrel 28 gauge my great grandfather bought in 1917 that was treated like a field hand by my great uncle who got it after my great grandfather died. I traded a set on horns that came off the first steer butchered at the Swift Ft Worth plant to my second cousin for her. I then sent her to Turnbull for a full restoration. Got her back a few days ago. New stock, forearm, dent taken out of barrel, re blued, re case hardened, internals fixed and some parts replaced. Looks like she did when my great grandfather ordered her from H&D Folsom arms co In 1917. Im her caretaker for the next 20 to 30 years then I will hand her off to my favorite nephew. I just would like to get the repro barrel on her now so I can just shoot the hell out of it at clays and or daily hunting, and put on original barrel for a dove shoot and a quail hunt a few times a year.

Why can't you "shoot the hell out of it" with the original barrels? Give us the real wall thickness in the vulnerable parts of the barrels, and we will tell you if it is reasonable.

If it were me, I'd sell the repro barrels and save myself the expense of modifying them. Then take what you saved, and what you got for the barrels, and go out and buy another gun, repro or not, and shoot it like you would have if you'd fitted them to your grandfather's gun. Life is too short to sit and wait for another job to be completed.

Well I shoot every day, I don’t seem to get much better, but I live on a cow ranch so the clay machines are almost at my back door. Normally I shoot75 to 100 daily. The wall thickness I got back from Turnbull says .027 last 12 inches of barrels.

Nothing wrong with that as long as you have verified the .027.

The critical section is the first 12 inches beginning at the juncture of the forcing cone with the bore and forward from there.





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That thickness at the end of the barrels is perfectly normal.

Yup, normal, and I'm sure Turnbull mentioned it because it was the thinnest section of the barrels. I would buy that gun.

I hope so Bill. I wondered why they didn’t give me the chamber measurements. They said will not be able to strike out remnants or bore polish due to remaining wall thickness

I wonder as well… that juncture I mentioned is the most critical measurement on a set of barrels that have been “polished” or had other work done on them.





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