Browning Light-12 for a slug gun?

[Willie Lowman]

I have a Light-12 with a 28" barrel. It was made in '53 and as far as I can tell it is in pretty good shape mechanically. Only thing wrong is the wood. Forend has a crack that goes about half way up it and the stock has some black spots like it was set to close to a fire. (It was like that when I got it, my mom picked it up at a yard sale for $150 from an elderly lady who said the gun was her late husband's.)

When I inherited my grandpa's Superposed, I stopped shooting the Light-12. While poking around the internets I found these Hastings rifled A5 barrels. http://www.hastingsdistribution.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=3

Would it be a good idea to turn my Light-12 into a slug gun? What would I need to change (aside from the barrel) to make it cycle correctly with slugs rather than the low brass birdshot it is normally fed? Would slugs cause excessive wear on my 60 year old semi-auto shotgun?

 

[PetahW]

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The Hastings bbl should work just fine - just be sure to set the friction ring for heavy loads, just like can be done to shoot high brass birdshot with the original bbl.

However, I'd recommend replacing the recoil spring (around the magazine tube), since the forend crack might have been caused by a weak spring - although the forend could also have been cracked by shooting high brass/heavy loads with the friction ring set for low brass/light loads (the bbl slams rearward too hard/fast when so set).


I would also repair the forend crack via re-inforcing the inside of the forend with fiberglas cloth/gel.



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