Honest opinions wanted on repair.

[bob in the woods]

If you are the shooter, not worrying about it is not a big deal...but I'd not volunteer to stand beside it.
All the vents, nipples etc that I have seen blow, were fine ;  until the  day that they weren't .

[Dphariss]

This whole business gets confused when we have people replying who consider any barrel to require safety margins appropriate to modern centerfire standards, or any guns with a drum unsafe, despite the countless numbers that were/are done that way.   First, it's highly unlikely the the drum was literally brazed in.  Many gunsmiths still use that term for work done with high temp silver solder which is melting at about 1200, well below copper brazing temperatures.  That temperature is not going to hurt a muzzleloader barrel which wasn't heat treated anyway.  As for bore scaling, the back two inches only get powder anyway so no big deal even if it was scaled which is unlikely.  Going back to the centerfire example, Winchester used to braze, not silver solder,  an accessory recoil lug on the bottom of the barrel of their 458 win mag. African rifles.  They apparently didn't consider that unsafe or damaging to the barrels.  And the business of almost all shotgun barrels being joined at the breech by brazing  is well covered.  Virtually any modern O/U shotgun designed for steel shot has the ribs silver soldered on as the flexing of the tubes with steel shot knocked soft soldered ribs loose.

The correct fix for your problem would have been to make a new drum with slightly oversize threads that would be tight in the barrel.  Easy to do either cutting the threads on the new drum in the lathe or by using an adjustable die.

Tom

So I am to believe that Winchester  doing "brazing" (its induction heat using surely silver solder or other relatively low temp alloy) on known alloy  high quality barrel steel and someone doing brazing in a small shop or garage using unknown and often the cheapest possible materials with a torch is the same process and will produce the same outcome?

I have spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how the respond to some the the comments here. Probably deleted a couple of pages of explanation all told.

But if people cannot or will not understand the difference between doing it right and cobbling things together, using low quality vs quality components then they are not going to grasp the concept no matter how its explained.

Dan

[Jim Kibler]

I don't think anyone is disagreeing much here.  The consensus (which I agree with) is that the original barrel drum work wasn't done properly and the "fix" wasn't the best approach either.  This is speculation, but the barrel in current configuration could work fine and last as long as it is being used.  It may not as well.  This is all hard to be certain of, especially without seeing  the item.  Even after seeing the gun, one could still not be sure how it will perform.  What is certain from the description, is that the original work was not done well and the "fix" is questionable at best.  I'm pretty sure everyone agrees with this.

The second thing being discussed is whether brazing is approprite for used on barrels, especialy barrel breeches.  Again, I think everyone would agree that done properly and for the appropriate jobs, brazing can be fine for work on barrels.  Not done well or for the wrong applications it could cause serioius problems.  

There are certainly commonly accepted standards of quality or proper workmanship, but with that said, the more original guns are studied, the more some of these break down. Yes, sometimes the original work was shoddy, quick and perhaps unsafe.  Sometimes though it's just different than we commonly accept today.  The point of this is to suggest an approach or mindset that is not too dogmatic.  The world is rarely cut and dry.

Jim