Moderators: if you think this little 'tutorial' might be helpful, pls move it or add it to that forum.
The ramrod pipes or thimbles are attached to the rib prior to the rib being joined to the barrel. the strongest joint is or course, silver solder, but soft solder works fine, and is easier to clean up. If you are joining the rib to the barrel with soft solder, it's probably a good idea to join the pipes to the rib with silver bearing or higher temp solder.
This series of notes and photos is on a waste piece of barrel and rib; the rib is already riveted to the barrel, so I used an unsupported end of the rib for this project.
The first task is to make the pipe itself. I drilled a piece of 1/2" round bar stock in the lathe ending with a 7/16" drill bit, so the walls of the pipe are only .0325" or a little less. A little thicker is fine, though original pipes are usually quite thin. Here's the pipe laying on top of the rib:
You could go ahead and solder this tube to the hollow of the rib, and it would work, but it wouldn't be 'nice'. What I look for on half stocked rifles is a ramrod that has no gap between the wood and the rib. To create that effect, and what appears to be the pipe 'growing' right out of the rib, you file a flat on the pipe to correspond with a flat that you file in the rib. I do the rib first, cutting through the concave trough until I get a flat clean rectangle, as in the photo. then I file a flat on the pipe to match. When they are laid together, the trough in the rib will be continuous with the hollow of the pipe.
This is an image of the pipe just laying on top of the rib so both flats show well. Next tin both the flats. I used silver bearing electrical solder here and ordinary solder flux. I rub the nose of a wad of four ought steel wool in the flux, and when the solder sticks to the steel, I rub it with the steel wool and flux, and it cleans off everything extra and leaves a completely covered and uniform flat, well tinned, as in this image.
Now wire the pipe to the rib so it's straight in line with the trough, and apply the torch gently to both until the solder flows. Fill the joint along both sides of the pipe and the rib - the extra gets cleaned up soon. The following image shows the pipe wired down, and a length of solder laying on the trough, ready for the heat.
I'll finish this up in the morning...good night.
Here's the pipe soldered to the rib, before clean-up.
Clean-up is done with a scraper, chisel, or in this case a flat die sinker's chisel. The excess solder is easily scraped away down to the steel. Be careful not to create a chatter in the steel...that is tedious to polish out. After scraping, I rubbed it down with 80 grit, then 180 grit, abrasive cloth. You can take the polishing as far as you want. Use cold blue on a q-tip to ensure you have removed all of the solder, as you won't be able to brown or blue through solder.
And finally, a look into the pipe. This whole process, including making the pipe in the lathe took less than a half hour, and the time spent is well worth the outcome. How deeply one has to cut into the rib to make the rectangular flat depends upon how thick your pipe is. The idea is to make the trough of the rib continuous with the tube. I figured out how this was done when one day, I had an English shotgun in the shop whose first pipe had come away on only one side. It was easy to see that the tube had been filed through, and that it was then soldered to a rectangular cut -out in the rib.
