The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

Some of you might remember me talking about fixing up some Remington 1100s for friends to duck hunt this year. Well this is one of them. One was my buddy's, one was his dad's and one was for a neighbor. This gun came to me in apart originally. His son had used it to duck hunt last year and trusted a friend to clean it and put it away. Problem is all the kid must have done was wipe it down and put it in the cabinet. Anyone who hunts ducks knows it's done on or near water. In this case it's on the lake near my house. It's usually raining so the guns get wet. This means they need to be pulled apart and completely cleaned. That includes the gas system as well as the action spring and piston which acts like a vacuum and pulls water down into the tube it sits in. Well this year dad pulled it out to get it ready for the season and the gas system was seized together.

Dad, being extremely pissed off tried to get it apart and in his haste with the help of a screwdriver and hammer damaged the gas cylinder. Then it came to me. I started out buy fixing the gas cylinder which meant cleaning up the mushroomed ends especially where the piston and piston seal rides. I replaced the barrel seal also as well as the action spring which was 1/2" under spec. at 14" instead of 14 1/2" or more. The new action spring is 15". I also replaced the bolt buffer which had been replaced sometime in the past and was a sloppy job. I thoroughly cleaned the gun, test firing it 6 times to make sure it cycled properly and had him fire it 6 times also to see what he though of it. It worked flawlessly.

Last week duck season started and his boy has been out hunting about every day since. He's put 2 boxes of shells through it so far. Then today the barrel explodes on the first shot. His mother had bought him a new box of ammo but they know what ammo to use so I doubt that's part of this but I'm looking into that. I doubt it was the wrong ammo but who knows. It is steel shot though and I'm not sure if this gun is rated for that yet. I'm looking into that. This gun is the 1100 Magnum model with a 3" chamber and is full choke. The only thing we can figure is he must have got mud in the barrel at some point or wad wedged in the barrel. No idea but thought I'd ask you guys for your valued opinion. The problems this gun had in relation to the gas cylinder were more cosmetic than anything but the rim of it was mushroomed over a bit. That was what I corrected. I doubt that's what happened here though. What do you all think? Oh and I'll have the gun here tomorrow and will take better pictures and post them up.

Wow, that looks like something in a cartoon!

I'm assuming no one hurt?

Dude, that boy my not admit it, but he stuck the muzzle in some mud. Clear and simple. Even major over-pressures would likely blow up the receiver end. That thing looks like Dolk said, out of a cartoon. Did he crap in his hip waders?:P

Definitely looks like a plugged barrel did that.

He's fine, maybe a bit shaken up. He was more worried what his dad would think. His dad's a good man but this is the second incident after the seized gas system issue which happened while gun was in his care. I made that gun look like new. I had Thanksgiving dinner over there yesterday because dad had to go back to Jefferson, Tx to work today and the boy was getting decoys ready for today. He got his phone wet the day before when the duck blind sank so his dad told his sister to let him use her phone in case anything happened today. Yeah right, take a 13 year olds phone from her. She gave it up grudgingly. Well as soon as it happened he called dad at work. Dad told me he got the call and saw it was his daughter's number and thought this wasn't wasn't a good sign. As soon as he answered it the boy said "Dad I'm sorry". He said "what for?" the boy said "I blew up your shotgun". First thing Monty said was "Are you ok?" I'll be looking it over tomorrow to see if there's any other problems. Hopefully it's just the barrel. Funny thing is before I even fixed it before he wanted me to look for a barrel with replaceable chokes but was going to wait until after the holidays. Here's what it looked like a month or so ago when I got done with it and will look like again if I can help it.

One last thing I just had pointed out that I hadn't even thought of. A friend I sent that picture to told me he's seen plugged barrels do that and even saw one do it that was fired while the barrel was a foot under water. Now that makes sense!! Water would be an obstruction that cause this. He may not have plugged it with mud. Might have accidentally fired it off while the barrel was in the drink. Maybe more of the story will come out. He's a kid may not be telling the whole story but he's not one to lie. He's a good kid but stuff happens and maybe he just feels dumb if that's what happened.

Yeah, he sounds totally normal. I hope his dad comes home, hugs him for about a hour, then thanks God that his some wasn't injured. Have you watched any of the YouTube videos on barrels blowing up? I need to find a couple. They will seriously make you fearful even though the person isn't hurt.

How old is this shotgun? What was the choke on the barrel and what kind of steel shot load was the boy shooting? Your barrel may not have been rated for these modern steel shot loads. If it was a modified or full choke with a three-inch magnum load of steel shot, I can see this happening, although it sure looks like a classic barrel obstruction issue to me.

tjtM38 wrote:How old is this shotgun? What was the choke on the barrel and what kind of steel shot load was the boy shooting? Your barrel may not have been rated for these modern steel shot loads. If it was a modified or full choke with a three-inch magnum load of steel shot, I can see this happening, although it sure looks like a classic barrel obstruction issue to me.

The gun is an older model Remington 1100 with an "N" prefix to the serial number but we never looked into an exact date. He's had if for more than 15 years and bought it used. I'm going to being nailing the date down now to replace the barrel. The barrel on this gun is a 28" vented rib 3" chamber and is a fixed full choke. This gun is also the magnum version. It's stamped "magnum" on the receiver though I believe that applies more to the barrel and specifically the chamber on this gun. His dad has one that's an M serial number I also went through at the same time and is almost exactly the same as this gun. That's why he got his, he liked his dad's gun so much. I also went through my neighbors that was not a magnum and had a replacement barrel but was a 2 3/4" chamber. The internal parts were the same for all three guns. His and his dads are the magnum models and have a different barrel from the non magnum model. They both had magnum stamped on the receiver. When you look for parts they don't make any distinction for magnum models for any of the internals either. You can see magnum on the receiver in the picture below. That said the shells he was using were ones his mother picked up for him the day before. I doubt they're either 3" or magnum shells though. I'm almost 100% sure they're steel shot though because we talked about that last night and steel is what you're required to use here for duck hunting as far as I know.

bunkysdad wrote:Yeah, he sounds totally normal. I hope his dad comes home, hugs him for about a hour, then thanks God that his some wasn't injured. Have you watched any of the YouTube videos on barrels blowing up? I need to find a couple. They will seriously make you fearful even though the person isn't hurt.

Russell until we nail down for sure what happened, if ever, this might be written off as a learning experience to double up on safety checks. When I talked to him earlier he was really not worried about the gun. He was worried about the his son but he's fine. These kids grew up with firearms and hunting and dad gets more pissed off about carelessness and not following safety procedures. If this turns out to be one of them he'll make sure the boy learns from it and doesn't do whatever made this happen again. Dad is a good guy. He would be my friend if he wasn't.

I sure do l Iike Remingtons. I have a Remington 870 magnum.

Plugged barrel.

Yeah I really like these Remingtons too. Now after rehabing three of them recently I'm sold on how easy they are to work on for a semi-auto.

That barrel had an obstruction of some sort. No doubt.

millman wrote:That barrel had an obstruction of some sort. No doubt.

Agreed. My money is on a possible submerged barrel. Glad the kid is OK though.

christiane wrote:

millman wrote:That barrel had an obstruction of some sort. No doubt.

Agreed. My money is on a possible submerged barrel. Glad the kid is OK though.

Yeah you would say that since you're the one who suggested it to me, lol. A damn good suggestion too because I hadn't even thought of that. Mud or submerged in the lake are the top culprits at this point. He was on a duck blind that sunk two days before today. They had to sit and wait for someone to come with a boat that had a motor take them back to the dock because they were in a row boat and it was to windy to row back so they sat there for a while. This is a real shallow lake so he may have let it get in the mud then. I'm going to look it over real close tomorrow to see what if any evidence of what happened remains on the gun. More pictures to come for sure. The gun will be living here until it's fixed one way or the other and that won't be until well after the holidays. Dad still owes me for the parts I bought to fix it last time and told me today he's going to take care of that first. Little does he know I'm going to just order them anyway. When he brought it to me the first time he asked me to look for a replacement barrel that he could change the chokes on and give him more options with it. He's my buddy so I'm not worried about him paying me back.

I said the lake was shallow but got to see that last week. His dad was by one day and another friend stopped by for some eggs. He's duck hunted that lake for many years and when Monty asked him if he was going out this season which was last weekend he said this was the first time in many years he wouldn't be hunting and hadn't taken his floating blind to the lake because it was empty. Seems someone forgot about gates for about 5 days when they drained it last month to kill some of the vegetation in the shallows. I had no idea just how shallow this lake is until we rode up to see it. You could walk across it. Funny thing is they'd closed the gates and it was already starting to fill back up. Once it rained this past weekend the lake almost completely filled back up. Looking at how shallow it is I can believe if the kid was on a duck blind that sunk he'd be in water shallow enough to touch bottom and bury the barrel in the mud. Here's what it looked like just over a week ago on the 22nd.

That is a classic case of mud, or dirt plugged barrel, seen it before, will see it again, call Remington and get a new barrel put on.

Junk Yard Dog wrote:That is a classic case of mud, or dirt plugged barrel, seen it before, will see it again, call Remington and get a new barrel put on.

I would tend to agree, however I would never shoot steel shot in a fixed full choke barrel that was probably not designed for steel shot. I can't speak for Remington, but my daughter has a Browning B2000 with a full choke barrel and Browning said it was not recommended.

Not recommended, but with a Remington it would be highly unlikely to blow the barrel like that, more likely to prematurely wear the choke out. That barrel looks like it had the obstruction at least 3" into the bore, typical of mud, a moments inattention while scanning the sky and he probably never even felt it hit the mud. Tunnel vision, many hunters lose situational awareness when the fever is on, be it buck, or duck, this is how accidents happen.

Wow. That one would surely wake you up. Nice looking shotgun though. Love the remingtons. I believe the 1100 is very close to the 870 with the addition of the gas system and return spring setup. If that is true then the internals are no different between magnum and non magnum. On the 870 the only differences between magnum and non is the chamber size and the length of the ejector. I have an old wingmaster that is originally a 2 3/4 chamber that can not use 3in with the new barrel I put on it. But without the longer ejector it won't be able to eject the longer shells reliably.

Glad he is ok. Definitely and eye opener and a learning experience.

Junk Yard Dog wrote:Not recommended, but with a Remington it would be highly unlikely to blow the barrel like that, more likely to prematurely wear the choke out. That barrel looks like it had the obstruction at least 3" into the bore, typical of mud, a moments inattention while scanning the sky and he probably never even felt it hit the mud. Tunnel vision, many hunters lose situational awareness when the fever is on, be it buck, or duck, this is how accidents happen.

Yeah that's kind of what I was thinking. It may have split the end of the barrel but I can't see it blowing it out like that. That took a fair amount of force. This wasn't the only suggestion that it may have been the steel shot. I even read a few posts on other forums where a bulge started to show from steel shot but not the barrel blowing out like this. About a week or so ago I was talking to another friend about shotguns and he told me he'd had one he shot with steel and it ripped the screw on choke off.

On that same line of thinking I even suggested to him that maybe he grabbed a slugged shell of some type and ran that through there. I have no idea what he took for ammo besides a brand spanking new box his Mama just got him. When I suggested to his dad that it may have been a slug he said he had a 20ga 870 that was full choke he ran slugs through all the time with no problems. I've done a little reading and know you have to be real certain a gun is rated for what you're shooting through it, whether that be slugs, rifled slugs, buck shot or steel.