I carefully heated the barrel and tube for just a few moments with a torch and touched the solder to the join on both sides. Next time (Oh, how I hope there isn't a next time) I will be even more careful about fluxing. That front sight is soldered to the barrel and could become desoldered easily. A kant-twist clamp holds the barrel to the tube.
If the towel starts steaming I would be getting it way too hot. A moist towel around the tube, with it clamped in a vise. I used some sandpaper to clean the join area on the tube as far back as I could go.Īnd lightly holding the barrel against the paper sanded the other surface. It's separated by about 4" from the front. F so I could in theory would not need to heat the gun up too much. It has a very low melting point of 275 deg. I bought some " Tix" solder from Brownells. The last part of my puzzle had to do with getting over my fear of desoldering the rest of the gun. At least soldering gave Dunlap some fits: "I either spoil the bluing and get a good soldering job or am so careful about the finish I get a lousy sweat joint." ( Gunsmithing by Roy Dunlap) So I read what I could and felt much more confident. I decided to peruse some gunsmithing books and read everything I could on resoldering shotgun ribs, which is an analogous problem. In any case, I had some data about what not to do, but still felt that I didn't have enough of a plan. This is entirely down to poor preparation. Here you can see that there are some large solder blobs (the gun was pretty chewed up and I think had already be resoldered partially so at least the front sight isn't my fault), and that I've had to buff the metal down to the bare brass.Īfter cleanup it wasn't so bad, but you can see gaps in the solder line. Oh, o k, here are two pictures of the loaner rifle. It'll look ok if he polishes it up though. I'm not even going to post pictures of the results, it was that humiliating. The front section of the barrel was resoldered, but I ended up globbing a large amount of solder on and the finish was completely ruined. A kind gentleman sent me one, and I did a marginal job. So I asked around on the forums to see if anyone had a beater gun that I could practice on, with the understanding that I would probably ruin it. The main complaint was that it lacked power (more on that in another post) but there was also the issue of the front section of the barrel being loose.īeing a paranoid sort of guy, I reasoned that if I tried to fix his barrel without any experience I would end up destroying the gun.
Special Orders require Full Payment in Advance and are non-cancelable and non-refundable.An old friend of mine asked whether I could fix his Benjamin air rifle, "bought with my own money", new, when he was 12. Special Orders: If no Stock # is shown in the chart, that barrel must be ordered on a Special Order basis. But, by the same token, the customer willing to spend the money for a custom gun is shortsighted indeed, if he starts economizing and orders "just any old barrel so long as it's che Mfg: Shilen SPECS: 4140 chrome-moly or 416 Stainless Steel. And, it is the insides of a barrel, that very small and vital area of lands and grooves over which the gunsmith has no control, that can determine whether the finished work of art is for shooting - or "just for looks". Shilen Contour #3 Barrel - 270 Caliber 1-10 Twist #3 Stainless BarrelĪll the loving care of the best stockmaker and the meticulous attention to detail of the master machinist will not make a gun shoot any straighter than the accuracy capability of the barrel used.