doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com Degrease between ribs?

I use steam when rust bluing barrels. No room for tanks. One set is irritating me right now. In two small spots along the bottom rib I�m getting some creap pushing when the barrels are heated. I�ve degreased, and degreased, and degreased. The barrels have one weep hole forward of the hook, and I do not want to add another.

Do any of you fill the ribs with solvent to disolve old flux, crud, etc? I did heat the barrels with a heat gun to make sure they were dry before hand, but still getting this ooze ruining the finish.

Thanks.

Best option would be to repair the leaks and start over. You can drill a weep hole in the rib under the fore arm. Then drill out one of the fillets at the muzzle between the barrels and ribs and hopefully create a flow for a solvent.

Water leaking from a loose rib will also cause this. Even w/o tanks, you may be getting enough condensate from the steam to cause it. I agree with Mark about repairing the ribs.
Mike

The areas effected are tiny. If bigger, I�d undertake the repair, but not in this case. It doesn�t seem water related. It�s an oil or flux substance. Thank you for the feedback.

It's very difficult to absolutely remove everything that may be a contaminate sitting in betw the ribs.
Solvent soaks, hot soapy baths even at boiling temps and all that can certainly help. But when the bbls go in for their boiling cycles, any small amt of old solder flux or hardened oil liquifys once again and runs out any pin hole or weep hole in the assembly.

A weep hole in the end of the muzzle is very helpful in my experience. Sometimes not possible if there is a keel is the way.
Using the tank method and boiling I sometimes can avoid a small spill by which way up or down I place the bbls in the tank or slightly tilt them muzzle up or down in the water, making any gunk inside run away from the outlet instead of toward and out of it.
Special 'which way is up' handling of the tubes is required when bringing them out of the water when doing this so you don't drain anything out the weep or pin hole(s) even after all your fine planning.

After the assembly is cooled off, it can be flipped around and drained OK w/o the oily water from inside the ribs damaging anything.
The cooled off metal and new blue won't be damaged as long as you carefully dry the crap off by blotting it off and then using something like acetone to clear that area that is contaminated. Then do your carding, then apply the next coating.
A real pain some of them can be, but there are ways to get around them.

Repairing any and all pin holes in the soldered assembly will of course cure the drainage onto the tubes from there. Seems like there is always at least one little one one every assembly no matter who put it up.
But the old crud oil and flux will still be inside and will liquify and run out the weep holes anyway when bluing. So you have to be ready to deal with that.

In a verticle steaming set up,,
try reversing the way the bbl is set down in the tube for steaming. That may avoid the junk from draining out that problem pin hole during the cycle.
Then remove and hang it in that same position till cooled off. Then you can tilt it and handle it to get any moisture out if needed and as above can work around any gunk that may drain out at that point.

It'd be nice if all we had to blue was brand new sets of bbls.

Between the ribs crud is a pain. I do a few things different that are not practical for the guy doing a set of barrels now and then.

1st I have an ultrasonic cleaner the will take 3 sets of barrels. This really helps.

2nd My damp box is also an oven. It is insulated and has a digital temputure controller. I initially built this to bake completed barrels to be sure any trapped moisture is driven out. I now have added a bake cycle to the barrels before polishing. This gets flowing or bakes and drys remaining crud.

I have not tried it but have heard of others having good results soaking barrels in lacquer thinner.

If you have 2 holes flushing with break cleaner can help.

Heating the leaky spot with a torch sometimes helps. Getting hotter than boiling but not hot enough to flow solder will sometimes force the crud out and or get it hot enough to congeal and harden. Once you get the contamination stopped you may need to spot polish the bad spot to get the rust to bite again.

Flammable stuff catches on fire and hot stuff burns!

Be careful!

Hope this helps.

Thank you all for your comments. I see the value of two holes, but don't feel I can punch another in someone else's barrel, even if it's a rough one.

Do not drill weep holes in barrels. They cause more problems than they precent. Most makers did put them in when new, which has to say something.

Brian, How do you deal with crud oozing from leaky ribs?

Other than water weeping out of a void, I haven't had the issue.