Heat shields on shotguns

I have a TOTALLY stock 870 Marine Magnum... I have added 6 accessories...

those are: a sling, a 28" remchoke barrel, 3 remchoke tubes, and LOTSA AMMO!!!

the sling, barrel, and tubes are for small-game and turkey hunting...

in HD form, I use the STOCK 870... and the only needed accessory is the ammo... (and lots of it, for practice)

I find no need to staple alotta crap to it, as it is a VERY functional defense piece AS IS!

And when the barrel's hot, I just don't touch it!
 
They are not safe for real serious use in my opinion. They do protect your hand somewhat from burns after shooting several boxes, but for serious use, I would go with a barrel that has ghost rings and no heat shield or even rifle sighted 20" IC barrel.

I shot two boxes of slugs last month through my 870, and my heat shield suddenly loosened from the recoil and slammed forward when I fired one of the slugs. It was out of position and got in the way of operating the pump (the rear mounting part kept bumping into the forearm). Not something I would want to happen in a home defense situation. Or if you plan to use it for HD, tighten it down real good and then tighten a barrel clamp right in front of it.
 
I have seen only one heat shield cause a problem, once is more then enough. A LEO brought in a Mossberg 590 with a heatshield. The action was very stiff and he was getting failures to feed. The problem was not obvious until I tried to remove the barrel. Somehow, he had jammed the heat shield back against the receiver and it was torquing the barrel. Once the heat shield was loosened and slid forward, the gun functioned fine. We took the shield off and chucked it.

All that cool stuff can get you killed. What ever happened to KISS?
 
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I tell you sumpin, on the coolness scale nothin beats an ole Model 97 or 12 with the WW1 heatshield/bayonet lug - in fact, it's so cool it's off the scale!

Thing about it: If you were going to bayonet somebody with a pump shotgun wouldn't you put your left thumb over the top of the bbl for leverage. Result: fricasseed thumb. :eek:

So the old bayo/heat shield was functional while the modern day tackycal/no bayo lug is just bling bling.
 
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