I know a lot of you have 870’s, so I’ll throw this out there.

I just got an 18″ barrel last night from MidwayUSA, fixed improved choke. Couple of things I found odd about it and I’m wondering whether I should be concerned.

1. The barrel is silver-colered inside as if bare metal, which is different from my 28″ barrel (black inside). Not sure if that’s normal or what.

2. More concerning is when I went to check function with some Tipton-style snap caps, the forend will not lock in place with the snap cap chambered. It also won’t fire–I can pull the trigger back but the hammer/pin do nothing as far as I can tell.

It will lock forward without the snap cap, or with a real shell (although I didn’t try to fire it in the house  ), so I am thinking maybe the barrel doesn’t like those particlar dummy rounds? They are a little smaller than the 2.75″ shells, so I figure they don’t seat right in the smaller barrel for some reason.

Anyone else run into this?