doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Thoughts on TIG welding on a barrel

Absolutely foolhardy, IMO.

David,
I agree that is what the book says. I just don't believe that the book is accurate.

I feel the same way......

Anywhere between the hands... I'd agree completely. Several inches ahead of the forearm, and the risk drops dramatically. I have two 20 ga. Ithaca Flues that have wicked looking longitudinal splits in the forearm area. I'd be surprised if either did not cause the shooter some left hand injury. The cause was likely snow, mud, a stuck wad, or some other obstruction. I have a 12 ga. L.C. Smith OO Grade I bought for $40.00 for parts. The owner told me he fired the gun with snow in the barrels and split the left tube ahead of the forearm. No injury, just a different sounding report and he saw the leaves in the tree to his left get blown around. If you saw the damage any of these guns, you might conclude that we are crazy to ever pull the trigger on any shotgun, and none of these were welded.

I agree there is some risk of failure if this repair was attempted. Risk of failure does not have to equal risk of injury. I said from the beginning that I had reservations, but sometimes, risk can be managed or mitigated. There are a lot of variables to consider. I sure wouldn't want Goober down at the gas station to weld 'er up with his Lincoln buzz box and whatever damp rod he had laying around. I don't currently own a TIG outfit, but if I did, as an experiment ala Sherman Bell, I'd like to pick up a cheap single shot, or even a junker double, and duplicate this hacksaw damage. Maybe even make multiple cuts at say 2 inch intervals along the barrel... weld them and proceed to load it till it let loose. Then we could discuss the results and argue that one or two barrels proves nothing. So then I'd need more test samples. Please send me all of your high quality small bore doubles to further the cause of science.

Thanks to all. I emailed the friend and directed him to this thread. He got back to me and was quite impressed with the different opinions. He said he would talk to his friend and let him decide what to do.
It is a shame, the pictures he sent of this 20 ga. shows this gun was in very good condition, nice case colors, nice wood for a Field Grade and good bluing on the barrels....before.

I was aware the book listed 1020 for the bbls on that page. Where it is stated as 40 points of carbon is on the page for the bbls only. Personally I feel that when this chart was put in it was simply misstated there as being 1020. 1020 would be a viable option for most of those other parts, most of which were going to be case-hardened, but would not make a particularly good bbl.
4140 does date back a long ways & well could have been used. It is also quite possible different alloys were used over the years or even simultaneously on different grades, but they would all likely have contained that approx 40 points of carbon. The points was incidently an old method of stating the % of an alloying component, 100 points equaling 1%.

I would HIGHLY recommend that if you weld up those barrels that you anneal the area afterwards. If you would run a series of micro-hardness tests from about 1/2" before the weld and continuing across the weld to about 1/2" past the weld you will see wide variations in hardness. This is not a good thing
to leave without annealing. A lot if welds don't fail in the weld, they fail in ductile areas directly on either side of the weld that were caused by the welding process.

If it was my gun I would sell it to someone that wants to learn to sleeve.

Another I agree with the option to have this barrel sleeved.

It seems like a nice science project to go ahead and weld it, but the prudent thing to do would be to have it sleeved.

One more thing: I would bet an aggressive prosecutor could easily get the idea that taking a hacksaw to a shotgun barrel about 13 inches from the breech would fall under the heading of "attempting to make a sawed-off shotgun", which would make the saw operator eligible for an extended stay in the Graybar Hotel. The guy experimenting with welding up the old beater - what's he going to say? "Yeah, I was cutting it there, but I wasn't going to go all the way through?" As a pure scientific experiment, it might be useful to see whether barrels can be welded, but do consider the legalities which might apply. Before you wind up having to pony up $10k or more to ... a criminal defense attorney. (My brothers at the bar will be so pissed at me, for giving advice that would ... cut into their business. )

As to the mope working the hacksaw who started all this, from the looks of the barrel he was about as competent at operating a saw as he was at breaking, entering and getting away, i.e., not very.