i agree with some of what you said,
however,
if you want to save, and maybe resell the old barrel, cutting the shoulder will sure take care of that.
as hard as it sounds, a new pipe wrench will remove a barrel easy enough, and you can turn the wrench marks easy enough..
but, be careful, 17,s are real soft, and easy to tweek, they are only surfaced hadended.
they are very strong, but tweek easy..
i was tought to cut the shoulder, but found that that ruins the barrel for any real future use.
later this week, ill post some how to in a hot tips post. ill be removing a barrel from a 17 and installing a CMPicon made barrel back on.