Dent in one tube of double barrel Stevens

I have this old 12ga Stevens with a dent in one of the barrel tubes, very small dent about 11 or 12 inches from
chamber end, appears to have been dropped. Is it repairable or replaced? If needing replacement, are any barrels available anywhere?

Thanks - John Collins

The cheapest way is to find a gunsmith with a hydraulic dent raiser and send it to him. Dent raisers are $500.00. But to have it raised will probably only cost $100 bux.

You may want to test the pattern from the dented barrel. Unless it is ugly or distorted, leave it alone. Regards, Clark

Small dents are easily raised. A gunsmith puts either a hydraulic dent raiser or a sliding brass dent raiser into the barrel, then uses a small hammer with a polished face to work the dent out.

The work has to be done carefully and lightly, so as to not damage the metal finish (blueing, etc) on the surface of the barrels.

Dents that protrude more than about 0.005" into the bore should be raised and not "shot through."

When raising a dent, I will also polish the inside of the tube where the dent was.

wyop, sounds like you may be equipped to do this. Are you interested in doing it for me? The dent is more than
.005, it is clearly visible looking down the bore.

Thanks - John Collins

Can anyone suggest the best way to make a "sliding brass dent raiser" as wyop mentioned?

John, Sorry I didn't see your replies earlier. I'm not able to take on any more work just now.

On making a dent raiser: Here's a video by Larry Potterfield of Midway USA that very quickly runs through what is going on with a dent raiser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQB3kfl_a0g



I don't use steel for the sliding wedges on mine, I use brass. Also, I tend to use a steel hammer on the outside of the barrel, not brass. This is sort of an odd inversion of what you see Mr. Potterfield doing, but my theory is that I don't want to put something down the bore that might cause me to have to hone out a mark, and steel-on-steel is apt to scratch the bores.

The hammer for the outside: I use a very small 4 oz. ball pien hammer, which you can find most anywhere, but I've polished the face and the ball to about 800 to 1000 grit levels - they're not quite a mirror finish, but they're close. I find that using a highly polished face on the hammer means that the blueing is left as little disturbed as possible, and I'm not putting more marks into the exterior steel that I must polish out when I'm done.

I can't demonstrate the technique here online, but I wish to emphasize in the strongest possible terms that you aren't using heavy blows from the hammer at all - it's more like a gentle tap-tap-tap, stand back and observe carefully, then a bit more tapping, etc. After a bit of tapping, I might re-position or re-tension the dent raiser. Another thing to emphasize is that the raiser is sort of mis-named. Beginners think that the raiser is used to raise the dent directly. Well, no, it isn't. The "raiser" is merely a backing anvil which you use to "jack up" the area surrounding the dent, and this surrounding area is that you lower the steel surrounding the dent, then you even things up. It's difficult to describe with just words, it becomes very clear the first time you see it done in stages and you run your hands over the barrel as you're doing it.

Proceed with deliberate, slow action. Don't over-tension the raiser on the first application of the hammer - you want to position the raiser completely under the dent, then tension it to be snug and a little bit more, then start tapping. After you're making a little bit of progress, check the tension on the raiser.

Most shotgun barrels are rather soft as well as thin - some fine guns might have barrels only .025 to .030 thick in the middle area between the chokes and forcing cone. Many American guns will have barrels that start in the .040+ range, but might have been honed out over the years to remove pitting. I always check the wall thickness of shotgun barrels before I do anything radical to them, as well as run a bore gage down them to find out what the barrel profile looks like.

Over the years I have made 3 hydraulic dent raisers after blowing the seal on a production one and taking it apart. They are disgustingly simple to make. I used old 22 RF barrels as the main tube and drill rod for the lower body and anvil. I used common O rings on the anvil and drive piston and they worked fine although both parts have to be made close to zero tolerance or it will squirt small bits of O ring through the gap. The only headache I had was the 20 gauge unit. The anvils used to split down the middle where the piston screwed in if the barrel circumference did not match perfectly. I finally ended up clamping the piston to the to the anvil with silver solder and flux in between and heated the unit to red so the solder flowed and dipped it in oil. The only other problem is that some character comes along every 8 years or so and I sell the ones I have because I seldom use them. Then 2 days later I need one and Brownells wants $500 for them so I make another. Right now I have to make a couple more as I sold the last ones I made to a buddy in DC and I had to turn down a job this fall. Raising dents is easy money. Buying or making the tool. That's expensive. I'll probably make them in the spring after I get done with hunting season and setting up the new machines. They are a nice project for anyone that likes to tinker. Some very EGGZACKERY machining, fitting and polishing but the hard to make parts are small so you can make and throw away a dozen at no cost until you get it right. I will put up some step by step pictures when I make them. The last one I made took a day.