shotgun barrel bending

Ive bent shotgun barrels before in a hydraulic press on v blocks to make them hit where they point and have had good luck. However I have one that has creeped back twice to shooting high after bending after what I consider not much shooting, 3-4 boxes. After bending would lightly heating the barrel to stress relieve it prevent this return to the old point of impact? Or should I just over bend it and shoot it and see where it settles?

perhaps a taller bead on the front would be safer?

kustomizer said:

perhaps a taller bead on the front would be safer?

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That’s a rifle solution, shotguns are supposed to hit where you point, not aim if that makes sense
Bending is a standard practice

Maybe try cryogenic stress relieving? It was all the rage 20 or so years ago with rifle building/accuracy. I don't know how cost effective it would be in this case?

actually a higher bead might help you. the simple explaniation is: visualize if you had a marble on the end of the bbl. you would automatically hold the end of the bbl. lower to see the target; therefore the pattern will be lower

I doubt cryo would do anything. There's never been any proof I've seen that suggests it does anything for rifle barrels, other than improving tool life in the mfg process.

I think it was Speerchucker that straightened them by whacking them on a telephone pole behind his shop.

I no next to nothing about gun barrels and the metallurgy at play. But flame straightening tends to have a good track record for keeping things straight. Perhaps it could keep it bent?

I have to agree with Strostkovy, I've shot hundreds of thousands shotguns shells at Profesional Skeet targets and met many commercial specialist in the Shotgun market and I recall this subject came up before and flame straightening has been used in the past as long as the high pressure chamber area was protected when a procedure was applied to barrels. Something to consider

dont bend it. just adjust your shooting to the point of impact. same way as field guns shoot lower then the sights because of the raised rib.

I've been told by an experienced trap shooter that a bent shotgun barrel with a rib will return to the original position if shot alot. I have an M37 Ithaca skeet gun that shoots very low, I was thinking to slit through the rib standards, bend the barrel to shoot higher, then make and solder in proper spacers to get the rib flat and straight again. Thoughts?

Johnny Hofield put a Browning barrel in a tree fork and bent it a little.
I can't remember if it got any better.

Brownell's used to sell a barrel bending tool, dunno if they still do.

Wasn't much to it other than a rigid main beam, with a couple loops that would go around the barrel, and a screw thread to push at the point you wanted the barrel bent at.
Once you hit the modulus of elasticity, you should be good. YMMV, apparently though.

Ok , I saw this post and have a bit of knowledge. Back almost 50 yrs ago, my father was friends with a famous trap shooter Larry Gravestock. Larry shot a single barrel pump (It was a Mod 31 Remington, I just looked it up) and the barrel was bent upward to such an extent that was obvious to anyone that looked at it. His technique was to put the barrel in a lathe between centers and crank the tailstock until it bent the barrel (cold) to where he wanted it. I think there was possible issue with the rib, coming apart, I saw him do this and the rib just bent with the rest of the barrel, but I was just a kid. Of course, there was testing and tweaking, but that is how he did it. His shooting style in trap was to spot shoot after calling for the bird and the extreme bend up of the barrel would take care of the rest. Crazy, but it worked for him. He actually made his money shooting live pigeons in very exclusive circles (usually in Europe), where wagers were astronomical over sometimes just a single bird, . A very clandestine side to the shooting sports.

I have played around some straightening shafts and tubes. I typically measure how far I am overdriving it past center so that when I release the force it ends up strait. You have to kind of sneak up on it slowly. Overdrive, release, check, overdrive a little more, repeat. If you go too far then you have to rotate it and bend back. It typically takes way less force or overdrive to move it back to strait. I think this is due to the residual stress from the first bend. So it does not surprise me that a straightened barrel would end up with some of the bend returning after shooting. Probably it is not as bad as it was originally.
One possibility might be to intentionally bend it too far down, then bend it back up to strait, this might end up with similar residual stress on the top and bottom.

I have used flame straightening on some parts but you need to get the metal up to a bright red almost white hot in a small spot so the process may not be compatible with a part that has solder or brazing. Multiple spots are heated along the convex side. As you add heat the part bends more convex then when it cools it moves back to a little more strait than it started. I have an old technical paper describing how this is done to straighten bridge beams. It typically leaves a small bump at each spot it was heated. It seems like all of this is more art than science so perhaps some experimentation with a low value gun. Peening is another process that can be used for straightening no idea if it would work on a shotgun barrel.