Soft soldering down the front sight or under lugs

[Dave B]

I wanted to pick up this thread out of the discussion from Silver Solder thread.
I shared awhile back with you all my soldering a hollow under rib and now I need to put a front sight in place on it. I have soldered several under lugs down and plan on following the same procedure but on a much finer level.  Correct me if I am wrong but the old archives had a example of the soldering of a front sight using a partially cut section of silver or brass with a small bridge between the sections. The longer side of the bridge can be secured in place with a clamp and the blade is kept perfectly in place by the small tab still attached. Once the soldering is complete you take your diagonal cutters and clip the tab and finish filing the  front sight. I picked up a RC McRoy VHS tape on a pistol restoration and he shows a similar example in his video as I just described. I will try to post some pictures of my process this week end.

[frogwalking]

This is a perfect subject for me.  I have a fowler kit and will be soldering three under lugs and the front sight on.  I had thought the underlugs needed silver solder but am told a good soft solder is adequate.  (It is a 20 ga.)  I have soldered lots of copper pipe and a few pieces on guns, but was younger then, and my idea of what is acceptable has changed considerably. 

I will be paying close attention to your further posts.  What type of solder do you use, and do you use anit-flux around the front sight or are you just real careful.  My sight is sterling and has a heart shaped base.  Please give plenty of detail in your descriptions.

thanks in advance

Frog.

[George F.]

I just finished my 20 gauge fowler a month or two ago. I soft soldered the lugs and front sight on with that solt solder Track of the Wolf sells. It is easy to use. Just make sure the pieces are cleaned and fluxed. Be careful not to burn the flux. If you do burn the flux, you'll have to heat it, and wipe it to remove it. Tin the piece and slowly heat the joint until the solder flows. It cleans up very easy to. For the front sight, you can use Jerry H's tip. use white out on the barrel where you don't want the solder to flow, like around the sight location. To clean the lugs for the round barrel, I wrap the barrel with 80 grit paper and slide the lug back and forth until its clean. Hope this helped.   ...Geo.

[Dave B]

So here is the beginning of the process. I used a sheet of 14 ga. sterling silver to draw out the pattern on then cut it out with my jewelers saw. I then flattened the area on the barrel where the sight will be placed. I notched the hold down extention for my tie wire and used a nail to hold it all in place. I will be tining the barrel and the sight then with the sight held by the tie wire warm it up till the solder flows. I will be using a silver(5%) bearing solder with a liquid flux I got from the local Ace hardware. I will post more tomorrow after I get it attached. I have not tried the white out but have used soap stone on occasion.

[David Rase]

Dave,  I have done several silver sights without bases on both round and octogon barrels.  I always cut a groove into the barrel the same width as the sight with a chisel style engraver.  I go about .032" deep.  This allows for a stronger attachment.  If all you do is solder the front sight onto a flat you filed onto the barrel it will be very week and more then likely break off with only the slightest bump.  I have not knocked off a front sight that was set and soldered into a groove.  I also use silver bearing solder, not soft.
DMR

[Dave B]

Thanks Dave,
I was thinking about that very issue last night. With you arguements I think I will sink it in for good measure. That would really blow a days hunt having the front sight go away with a glancing blow.

[northmn]

I ahve soft soldered underribs and sights on more than one fowler or rifle.  It works very well.  A good soft solder that properly flows is stronger than many think.  You need to "tin" the surfaces before doing so.  It also has the advantage of less heat to the barrels.  I have also soft soldered on shotgun ribs on single barrel halfstocks.  The one failure I had was redone (an under lug) and held after that.  Works fine on sights without a lot of hassle also.  If done right it takes quite a whack to break one off and a silver soldered one would likely bend out of shape anyway.  I used plain old Harware store 50/50 and non corrosive flux.

DP

[Roger Fisher]

Thanks Dave,
I was thinking about that very issue last night. With you arguements I think I will sink it in for good measure. That would really blow a days hunt having the front sight go away with a glancing blow.

Murphy's law rules.....

I have not knocked a frt sight off (completely) but I sure has h     have bent them all to hades!!    First one against a tree 2nd one against a low bulkhead (bout 2 mos ago some such)   And they were doved into an octagon barrel.......

[Sean]

Anybody ever use Swif95 paste solder for this?  Seems to me like it has pretty high tensile strength and should work well for front sights like that and lugs on o/r barrels.  I picked some up from Brownells recently and was gonna give it a try.

Sean

[huckfinn]

I discovered that just regular plumbers paste flux worked better than the liquid type.  The learning curve was pretty steep for me on soldering underlugs on my fowler.  I would agree with all the hints given here.  Practice on a old piece of barrel first and see how it goes with the flux and heat.  Good luck!

[Daryl]

I-too have used normal 50/50 solder for sights- back in the 60's. I now use low temp silver solder, which has around 5% silver and tin - no lead. This is much stronger & will actually hold modern-type sights with ramps. It is the system used for the ramp front sight on my .458 and that worked fine for 30 years.  A stonger 'bond' is not necessary for lugs or sights.

REAL "silver solder" as we call it, is the high temperature solder that is called "Silver Brazing" in the States. This 'solder' requires more heat than many want to subject a barrel to and requires extensive cleaning up after the barrel cools down from red to bright red heat, depending on the 'silver solder' used.  One batch of siver solder I came across that was used for soldering carboloy teeth on lumber saw blades requires almost white heat before it will flow - terrible stuff to use.

[northmn]

Carbide tips on carbide circular saws are also brazed on in such a fashion.  Europeans have 'sweated" ramps and scope mounts on for years.  Failures have been noted but for the most part they worked or they would not have done so.  Whether the heat is worse than screws is a matter of preference.  50/50 flows beautifully and tends to "suck in" better than the low silver content low melt solders, but I have used them successfully also. The issue is more one of technique than solder type as all I have seen when properly done, work.

DP

[Dave B]

Taking a page out of Dave Rase's book I made my first attempt at sinking a single blade into the barrel of the .62 cal Oct-Rd barrel. Note the step in the silver base now. I used an N graver squared flat engraving bit to cut the channel after having use a regular square graver to cut four sets of parallel lines to the area marked that needed to be hogged out.



You can see the bumped up edges of the inlet in this picture. The silver is .063 and my flat graving chisel is .059 so some fudging the width was needed. I in the end decided to bump up the sides to get a little better retention of the blade.
 


I tapped the sight down into the cut groove after bumping up the sides of the inlet, just like you do with the tennons and rear sight. I will be working on getting the soldering done next, once I locate where it got put from the last time I used it.
More later

[Birddog6]

Please excuse my ignorance on the front sight as I have not installed a sight as such,  but wouldn't it be allot stronger if it didn't have that notch cut out of the blade ?   Or is there a specific reason to have the notch ? or is it to make it fancier or what ?
 

[Dave B]

Birddog6,
Its a French thing. It helps when wing shooting. While your tracking the bird the sight actually whistles.    I'm sorry I couldn't resist.  The cut out at this point is mute now that the blade is held with the inlet. The purpose of the extra portion was to keep the blade in place to solder it to the barrel. When I am done the forward portion of the sight will be all that you will see. The back half will be removed.

[rich pierce]

Man I got to have one of those whistling sights.    Might help my follow-through.

[J.D.]

I'm whistling into the wind when wing shooting with a flint gun, so the whistling sight would be a "mute" point, for me. 

God bless

[Robby]

All this time I thought it was a southern thing, you know, "Whistling Dixie"?

[Dave B]

I finally found my sliver bearing solder and gave it a try. I masked off the area using soap stone dripped a tiny amount of the flux into the inlet and fluxed the base of the blade. I wired the rear section of the sight unit to the barrel snuggly and adjusted the sight to the best vertical position. I very slowly played my fine point Oxy-acet tip on the area around the base being careful not to over heat it I did get it alittle too hot but the solder wicked just fine into the inlet.  All thats left is to clip off the stablizing tab and pollish her up. Here are the pic's

[jmforge]

I like the technique of wiring the piece on place.  The first few times that I silver soldered a barrel nut to a buttcap for one of my knives, I had the problem with the flux that had run under the nut boiling and causing it to move around a little bit.  Of course, the solder melted at that precise moment and I had a nut hard soldered on crooked!