doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Sleeving joint line

Sounds like it may be more trouble than its worth no matter how good a "deal" it is; live with it or pass on it.

The most attractive sleeving finish I have ever seen was done by Keith Kearcher years ago. Rather than trying to hide the obvious he finished the barrels with the new steel blacked and the damascus breech finished boldly showing the damascus pattern. To me, showing off the gun's heritage is something to be proud of. I believe I have seen some high grade Pieper Belgium doubles originally finished in this manner when they began monoblocking in the late 1800's.

Without seeing the barrels it is hard to pass an opinion other than to suggest . If it is a simple line of "bright " showing a good barrel blacker may well be able to re black so it dose not show .It will depend on the black as I have seen barrels blacked by "top London" blackerss that have had left joints showing , re blacked by a Birmingham trade blacker they hardly showed at all . All down to the process and formula.

Gunman, Sam W. can speak if I missunderstand. The soft iron inlay would be to fill the existing sleeve gap with a material that can be blued. Probably done by tapping a wire into the sleeve gap, then striking off until level with the barrel surface. Then refinishing. I am sure engravers do work like this in other areas , either repair of pits, etc. , or part of their composition.

Exactly Daryl. I was bouncing off the previous post of gold inlaying. The iron is done the same way as flush gold, smoothed to the surface and finish of the barrels and my experience has been that it will disappear when rust blued.

I have had about 10 soft-solder sleeved guns dismantled and TIG sleeved. Although the guy who does them always warns of the possibility of being unable to get them apart, he has always managed it so far! Guns must be reproofed after this process.
I understand all that Gunman says about the difficulties with this but it is about 1/2 the price of sleeving with fresh tubes and has always been very successful so far.
The one gun I have come across that had been TIG welded without removing the solder first was a disaster: a mass of blow holes. With very careful 'buttering' of mild steel filler rod and repeated striking up, we finally managed to achieve a clean finish but it took about 5 goes. The gun was of course reproofed afterwards.
In re-blacking soft-solder sleeved guns I often find it very difficult to lose the silver line. Never has this been visible solder, just oil leaking out of the joint causing the rusting solution to not take. Also I suspect that the flux trapped within the joint also leaches out and produces the gray gradient around the joint on some guns that gets progressively worse over the years.

Joe, my Pieper hammer gun is as the Kearcher job you describe except the Pieper has a steel breech and Damascus tubes.

Sam I do undrestand what you are suggesting ,Big difference between iron and gold .Ok it may work and if you want to try it let me know how it comes out ,but if it dosent work for any number of reasons eg. diferences in the thickness of the backends concentricity you end up with a ruined set of barrels .

The right type of radiusing done before the tubes are tinned and pressed into the breech will hide the joint line. Proper radiusing means undercutting the face, so that when the tubes are pressed together the undercu lips rise up, leaving a swarf that is then struck up.

Even though I have been reassured that welding is safe, the thought of a weld a few inches from my face, over the most stressed part of a the barrel kind of unnerves me.

One thing to keep in mind is the amount of material (wall thickness) at the joint. Assuming about .110 total, and everything else being equal, you have .055 for the new tube wall and the same for the old barrel in the back end. T'aint much to work with.