Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Ithaca 37 barrel fitment

Les Hovencamp passed away on Feb 26th. One of the folks in the Ithaca section posted that he spoke to his son, who indicated people would be getting their guns and/or phone calls. He did not say if the gunshop would continue in business, but Les did have an apprentice, maybe his son is going to run it. It will all depend on whose name the FFL (of FFL's) was in, how the name on the title of the shop/business is, etc.

Getting a barrel fitted is not hard if the gunsmith doing it understands the process. The end of the barrel bottoming out in the threaded cutout is what sets the headspace. The barrel shoulder does not go up against the face of the receiver. I went through the 10 16ga guns that I have with a depth mic (yes I know how to use them, spent lots of years in the trade) verifying dimensions.

If you look at the bottom of pre-855,000 barrels (that was the ser nbr cutoff) there is a witness mark running parallel to the bore. At the factory, to fit the barrels, they were screwed in until bottoming out, then the witness mark was stamped in a fixture. That witness mark would be used in the remaining fixtures to cut the thread interrupts, braze the barrel lug on and drill and tap the hole for the bead and/or 2 band RayBar sight depending on the year.

A gunsmith can cut a few .001's off the end of the barrel and the same off the shoulder to maintain the dimension, and see if the barrel threads will engage and then continue until the barrel turns into place correctly. I believe the threads are 21 TPI, don't quote me on this, it can be checked with a thread gauge. The trick is to not take off too much and miss so that the barrel over turns in. When it is turned back to correct position, it would increase the headspace.

If you take the barrel off, you will be able to see that the rim of a shotgun shell goes through the cutout/shoulder that the barrel stops against, just to prove to yourself, your gunsmith that the headspace is off the end of the barrel. If the cut is too much, it will have to go around again, potentially needing some of the end of the magazine tube removed so the barrel nut will screw down far enough.

I have a barrel that was fitted to 2 different guns before I bought the 2nd gun with the barrel. They had actually machined out the inside of the magazine nut to let it go down far enough, but it had been Bubba'ed with a set of pliers on the knurls so I found one in my collection of parts that had enough clearance. Mine is a 1949 37R gun (16ga) with a rare as hen's teeth, King Ferry vent rib choke tube barrel that was threaded in the old style on it.

Depending on the depth of the chamber, it could need to be deepened with a chamber reamer. I am having a gunsmith fit mine because he has a 16ga chamber reamer and what I will pay him, is close to halfway of the cost of renting the reamer, and if I broke the reamer, substantially less. A 16ga chamber reamer is $250.00. Otherwise, I could fit it myself. Its not hard if you are a competent machinist.

I have a friend that got a barrel that would almost turn into place (he should have bought lottery tickets that day) he was able to simply file off the end of the barrel a couple .001's of an inch to get it to index in properly.

If you read around the web, you will see BS about cutting the face of the receiver, unbrazing and rebrazing the barrel lug back on, all of which is bulls**t as the extractor cutouts have to line up and cutting the receiver face isn't what sets headspace as I explained above.

While I am not a FFL gunsmith, I can work on Ithaca 37's and you can find me as drcook on shotgun world or 16ga dot com and see some of the guns I have rescued, restored, stocks I have worked on. There is also a wealth of information in the Ithaca dedicated section on SGW.