How to make a Sawed off Shotgun

The shotgun has long been a standard in home defense for obvious reasons. The ability to modify this weapon into a shorter more versatile style has sparked the interest of a large number of shotgun owners. This guy seems to know his stuff when it comes to creating a sawed off shotgun.

Check out the video below to see the steps he used to modify his firearm.

Having a versatile gun like this is important when seeking to be able to protect your family and home from intruders or other external threats.

It seems easy enough. A few simple steps and you are ready to hit the range.

What do you think? Looks like a pretty cool project if you ask me.

Video transcript:

Here is another project combining my hobbies of mahcining and guns. It’s a short video of a little weekend NFA project that came out pretty well. It’s a Bi-cal MP220 side-by-side shortbarreled shotgun. This was a fairly simple project, so I didn’t make any video of the procedures. I’ll explain each step in photographs, and show some video at the end of me shooting it. Let me know what you think about this project in the comments below, and don’t forget to subscribe.

Here’s how the shotgun started life. It was just a standard 20-inch coach gun, no thrills. Picked it up for about three-hundred bucks at a local gun store. Remember that in the US, if you cut a shotgun barrel down to less than eighteen inches, you need to have an approved form-1 before you start. You’ve gotta pay your $200, get approval from the ATF, and have your form in-hand before you ever start work.

The first step is to cut the barrel down. I measured slightly longer than my form 1 claimed, and marked the spot. In this case I cut the barrel at 10.1 inches. The barrels taper, so getting a straight line all the way around the cut point was a little tricky. Fortunately, this isn’t really a critical step, as I squared it on the mill later. I used the straight edge of a piece of paper wrapped around the barrels at the correct length, and used a marker along the edge to mark the cut line.

Here’s the resulting line, the next step is to get the hacksaw out and start at it. There isn’t much cooler in my book than taking a hacksaw to a side-by-side shotgun.

Well, the hacksaw didn’t last long. In realizing that power tools exist for a reason, I got my trusty angle-grinder out with a cutoff wheel, and made short work of chopping the barrel down. And here’s the result. It’s rough, but it worked just fine. That short barrel’s starting to look pretty good.

The next step was to square off the end of the muzzle using the milling machine. It took a while to figure out how to do that, since there aren’t many surfaces to use for references. I ended up using the bottom of the locking-lug and the breach face as my reference surfaces. I squared them up with a dial test indicator to better than a thousandth in the Y and Z axis across the face of the breach. That should translate to a muzzle that is square with the breach face.

I then made multiple light cuts with a long carbide end-mill until the entire face of the muzzle had some material removed. This could’ve been done with a file with good results, but since I had the milling machine, it probably did a better job than I would have.

The next step is to fill the gap between the barrels. I used a bar of lead solder, propane torch, steel wool, copius amounts of Flux and patience. This was pretty tricky, but it came out nicely in the end. Well-fluxed steel wool was the key in making it look nice. Without it, this process would’ve failed miserably. I then touched it up with some Cold Blue to match the silver solder to the blue of the barrels. It came out really nicely as you can see in the pictures.

With the barrels done, next up was the woodwork. The first thing I chose to do was to cut down the forend. My chosen barrel length of ten inches caused the forend to extend just past the barrel, so I assembled the gun and marked the edge of the barrels on the forend, then used my miter saw to cut it flush.

I debated whether to do as most do, and cut the stock off entirely, leaving only a pistol grip. Ultimately I made the decision just to shorten the stock. Why did I decide on a short stock? Well, tactically, in the end of the world situation, I wanna be able to shoot at least a hundred-and-fifty slugs with this guy without having to take a break, because I’ll be protecting my massive food stores from the mobs of unprepared sheeple. A stock allows me to do that better than a pistol grip. Pistol grip would allow dual-wielding, but I thought that ‘more accurate fire’ argument swung the decision tree matrix over to the shoulder stock.

Yeah, just kidding. Like most of my guns, this is purely a range toy, and something that I made because it’s awesome. I chose the short stock because it was the most awesomest option. Which leads me to the finished gun. When I finished the wood cutting, I stripped the orginal blonde finish, sanded and rounded and re-stained it with a Russian Red and a Dark Walnut stain, and finished it off with some tung oil. I think it looks much better with the dark red wood, Certainly way more tactical. I then ground down a custom limb saver, and called this project done. Which leads me to finally getting the video. Here are the first shots with the shotgun. It’s exceptionally loud, but a LOAD of fun.

Ready?

[Gunshots]

Oh yeah. S’not that bad!

This was a fun weekend project that involved six months of waiting to get approval for. Overall in the NFA world, it’s a pretty cheap and easy to complete project, and would make a great first form-1. Let me know what you think of the gun in the comments, ways I could have done something better or smarter, things you would have changed, and don’t

by Jesse Males
Source: Jim McPherson Youtube