Gentlemen:
This post is a little premature, but my theoretical .22 Rimfire SxS double rifle project has taken a big step forward with the recent acquisition of a potentially suitable donor .410 shotgun.

I have been looking for a long time, hoping for an affordable British hammerless .410 or 28-bore double to appear on the horizon, but an entire flock of pigs will fly past long before that happens! The Belgian/Tranter style hammer guns, including poacher versions, are of no interest to me for this conversion, and even the traditional-styled Brit hammer-guns tend to have oversized firing-pins, often steeply angled downwards, and indifferent triggers. One of them I bought anyway, a dainty little Birmingham gun retailed by W.E.Ekins of King William Street, Adelaide. Gorgeous!

But I digress. The first of what will probably be many compromises is the origin of the donor gun: Spain. Friend of mine offered this little gem at a price I couldn't afford to pass up, so here it is:

No makers name, just the word "Imperial" engraved on one barrel, "Made in Spain" on the other. It does have a Purdey-style hidden third bite and disc-set strikers though, and is rock-solid on the face.

Some time ago I acquired a pair of .22 barrel liners from Brownells, with the intention of making long .410 chamber inserts bored eccentrically to accomodate the liners while retaining the existing centre-fire strikers in their new rimfire role. Rotating the .22 chamber around the central firing pin will give me some degree of regulation from the breech end before the extractor is cut. Its a bloody tight fit in a .410 chamber, but I think I can make it work. The intended result will be akin to full-length Morris tubes.

Couple of other projects are going to get in the way of this one, so this post is really just a teaser, prompted by recent threads on shotgun-to-rifle conversions.

...and I will probably need to seek advice from these forums as things progress.

Wish me luck!