Lee Loader

Here's the story of how I turned a shotgun into a 357 Maximum rifle. I'm going to mostly let the pictures do the talking, but if you have any questions feel free to fire away.

I started with a .357 Mag barrel from a Timberwolf rifle. The outside was ugly, but the inside was perfect.


I bought a Turkish folding 12ga Shotgun for $89.


Faced off the loading ramp, turned a recess for the rim, and cut the extractor notch a little deeper:


Turned the barrel down to fit into the shotgun barrel:


Removed the vent rib and threaded the barrel for a scope mount:


Installed the mount and milled some more slots.

No picture, but I plugged the muzzle of the 357 barrel, slathered it in JB Weld, and slid it into the shotgun barrel. I set it on the butt stock and made sure the barrel was against the receiver.

Drilled and tapped a hole in the shotgun extractor:


Used a piece of pipe to hold a bolt in my mill and then milled the bolt to fit the new extractor groove:


Installed new extractor in old extractor:


It fits and works:

I've read that shotgun conversions can have the primer flow through the large firing pin so I decided to bush the firing pin.

I drilled and tapped the receiver:


Drilled a hole in a screw:


JB weld again:


Filed/sanded flush:


Turned down the firing pin by chucking it in a drill press and grinding it with a dremel. Then reinstalled it:

I borrowed the 357 max reamer from GBO forum and reamed the barrel to 357 max. I found that with 357 mag loads everything was fine, but 357 Max loads needed a rifle primer and I got misfires. So I shimmed the hammer spring, but the trigger pull went to 6 lbs. That was with a trigger job and everything polished.

Here is the stock trigger group:


I decided to gain some mechanical advantage by moving the spring up on the hammer. So I used a diamond bit in my dremel and made a new hole:


New position of hammer spring is 100% reliable with rifle primers and with a little under 4 lbs trigger pull.


I chopped the shotgun barrel down to around 20 inches IIRC. Finished product:


How does it shoot? Great. 180 gr XTP bullets group around an inch at 1700 fps and I haven't spent any time working up a load. That's good enough for my goal of a 150 yd deer rifle.

This is the finest work I've seen in a long while! Well done!

Thanks.

Now I'm thinking about converting one of those Rossi youth .410 shotguns to .22 Hornet and having a lightweight walking around rifle. Does the madness ever end?

klr wrote:Does the madness ever end?

Nope

Very nice work.

That is really great. Excellent photos and write up too. Thank you for posting it. I really enjoyed reading and looking at the pictures. Exceptional work on that conversion.