Shotgun barrel soldering jig

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BBBBill

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I've been hacking on guns for 30+ years now, but this is the first time I've taken on one of these. An old double barrel muzzle loader. Got to completely resolder the breach blocks, barrels, and rib. Anyone got plans for or pictures of a jig to hold everything in place for soldering? If so, it would save me a bunch of time reinventing the wheel. Any web sites or forums catering to this subset of the smithing world?
 
Well now, that sounds like a mighty ambitious project! :D

As I recall seeing somewhere years ago, the old English & Belgian double-gun makers didn't so much use jigs, as they did wire.

In practice, the mating parts of all the surfaces were cleaned and acid flux applied. Then all the parts were carefully wired tightly together with soft iron stove-pipe wire, and aligned with little iron wedges driven under the wire wraps.

The idea being that the soft iron wire & wedges would expand at the same rate as the gun parts when heated, and thus stay tight.

Then solder was placed where it needed to be, and the whole mess was put in a gas furnace to heat the assembly up until the solder flowed into the joints.

Sounds good in theory, especially if you were an old English or Belgian gun maker with a lifetime of training and experience on where & what to wire & wedge together, and where to place the solder before the Bake-Off!

About all I can say, other then that, is Good Luck!
You will need it!

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rcmodel
 
Rib soldering

Many smiths are now using Loctite Black Max #380 adhesive. I've never had a rib loosen up, and it sure is easy to use. Like everything, preparation is crucial.
 
He's asking about completely re-soldering the breach-block and barrel assembly back together.

I wouldn't recommend Black-Max #380 for that!

1224.jpg
rcmodel
 
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