Dovetail Lugs on American Heritage Barrel

[Mark Horvat]

I have a C weight American Heritage Coleran barrel and at the stage of cutting dovetails for the lugs.  This is a .54 cal. and the lugs are .046 inches thick.  I am looking at 4 lugs.  Once you do the math there is not much barrel metal left, about a sixteenth.

Do you fellows solder the middle lugs where this barrel is thinnest or what?

Thanks for your responses.

Mark Horvat

[Dennis Glazener]

Do you fellows solder the middle lugs where this barrel is thinnest or what?

Yes! Soft solder not hard silver solder/braze, high temps will ruin the barrel.
Dennis

[northmn]

Do you fellows solder the middle lugs where this barrel is thinnest or what?

Yes! Soft solder not hard silver solder/braze, high temps will ruin the barrel.
Dennis

Agree.  This question keeps coming up every so often.   Other mention that you really do have to space the lug under the thinnest part, whcih also makes sense.  When you solder on a lug on a barrel flat you can also file the part to be soldered on the lug very very thin.   As I have had success on a few fowlers soldering every lug on, I sometimes wonder is dovetailing is all that needed.  Most claim originals were dovetailed.  Also slot your lugs after drilling to permit wood expansion and contraction.

DP 

[Swampwalker]

I'm going to disagree - on a C weight .54, you should have plenty of material, though you don't need to install that deep - about 1/32 is deep enough.  Another trick is to use an upsetting chisel like you would a rear sight, to gain some more bite.  The only one I would consider soft soldering would be the one that falls on the thinnest portion of the barrel.

[Blacksmoke]

Mark:  Swampwalker is correct - the dove tails do not need to be very deep - esp. if you are going to soft solder them as well.   In reference to the old originals - you cannot compare "contemporary" to the barrels of old.  Old iron barrels were made a lot thicker than their modern counter part.   I am continually amazed at the weight of the historic gun barrels.  This would give plenty of "meat" to install a dove tail with no worry in regards to weakening the barrel wall.     Hugh Toenjes

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

File the bottoms of the lugs down to thin them. They really don't need to be that deep.

[Jim Kibler]

Here's my advice.  Cut a slot around .025" deep and upset the edges to raise a dovetail with a chisel.  File down the lug if desired.  This is the method most commonly seen on original barrels and I would feel confident using it on all of the lugs.  You will have plenty of material even at the narrowest part of the barrel.  On a related note, I just saw a trade gun where the underlugs were installed very shallow but in a similar fasion described.  I would guess the barrel had a starting wall thickness of now more than .062".

[flehto]

I'm presently building another Bucks County LR  using Rice's "B"  weight in .50 cal x 46" lg.  Because of the .09 web at the breech and 5/32" web  at the muzzle of the stock,  the dovetail at the breech end is .060 deep  and a  soldered lug w/o a base is used to allow a 1/16 dia. music wire pin to be used. The lug at the "waist is soldered on and was a real  "squeeze" for the 1/16" dia. pin. The other 2 lugs are dovetailed to  a depth of .035 and these weren't that critical to pin w/  the 1/16 dia. music. Even the early Lancaster which was just completed had  thin webs and req'd the same type of lugs. So...on an early Lancaster or early Virginia, what would be the average web thickness of the "originals"?.....Fred