doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Plating a brazed joint

I’m looking at a nice Lindner Daly hammergun that has had one of the hammer spurs brazed back on. The joint itself could be prettied up a bit with judicious filing and plating. It appears that the brazing metal used is brass. Can this be plated to look like steel? Would nickel plating accomplish this? Thanks. Ed

?? Have you ever used Tempilsticks. ?? One possible way to determine if the brazing metal is brass, free machininhg brass or an alloy. From a metallurgy table, determine the critical temp. of the brass used in this repair, and see if it flows freely with a neutral flame at that range. Mapp or propane will not work, only acetylene, RWTF

It looks like brass, but brazing is most often done with a bronze alloy filler, silver "soldering" often used on guns is a brazing process, but you can tell the difference. I suggest you try one of the quick blackening products sold by Brownell's or similar suppliers.
Mike

Yes, you could nickel plate your hammers to hide the brazed repair joint. But they will look like they are nickel plated, not steel. I think I'd rather look at a braze repair than nickel plated hammers.

Another option might be to use a product like Birchwood Casey Brass Black to make the brazed joint less obtrusive. I used some years ago to darken the brass furniture on a muzzleloader, and it held up pretty well. Of course, you could also attempt to completely remove the braze repair, and then try to have the spur TIG welded back on. I kinda doubt if you are going to want to melt that braze joint, just to determine the approximate melting temperature.

Correct-- silver soldering is at the lowest of the three mean temp. ranges used with oxy-acetylene welding/brazing. RWTF

Maybe try the product called "brass black" made by Birchwood Casey. It has worked for me on brass and bronze alloys.

One of the Brass Black solutions sold for touch up should work. They used to sell Silver Solder Black when hard soldering was still commonly called silver soldering (hightemp 1100f+ stuff)
That worked well for things like this.
Probaby off the market now . Maybe known to perhaps cause illness in endangered one legged mosquitoes in Belize


If the brazing was done with a simple brass alloy,,copper/zinc,,Here is an old method of coloring the repair joint...
Once you have the repair finished up and polished , place the part or selectively soak the joint in weak muriatic acid. 1tsp acid per pint water. Use room temp.
It works fairly slow so nothing gets out of hand.

This will leech the zinc out of the brass on the surface (only) and leave the copper of the alloy behind,,just on the surface. It will not effect the joint strength.
This is only a couple .000 deep if that,,probably less. Not unlike if you were able to plate just the brazed repair wih copper.

Clean the part off with some soap and water, rinse and dry.

Now heat the part gently and the clean copper will oxidize and turn black.
Don't over heat,,nothing near red heat is needed.

The surrounding metal will have lost any color from the acid dunking. That then is added back in around the colored repair with careful blue and rust patina tricks.
..Magic in a bottle from Birch-Wood Casey is a whole lot simpler!

All depends on what the final appearance is to be,,what you are starting with and how much time/effort you want to put into it.



Selective plating can be used.
The small brush plating outfits like Texas Platers brush plating kit works well for this. I used one for many years for small jobs and it works well.
Caswell Plating sells or at least used to sell similar kits.

Nickel can easily be plated over the repair. Copper is usually used as a flash plating underneith for the Nickel to adhere to steel.
But in this case the brass/brass alloy repair itself will do as the underplate.

The surrounding steel will still 'take' the nickel plating but it just won't be as firm a hold to the surface.
That may be a good thing as you can carefully polish the repair plating out to blend in with the surrounding steel.
I can assume here that the hammer has an overall polished steel look at least in this area. The kind of look that case hardened steel gets after use and the colors are gone but the extreme hard surface takes on a bright polished look.

When first plated,,Nickel will look dull and somewhat milky,dull & uneven in appearance. Even small touch ups like this.
It can be left that way,,that may also be an advantaage in the final appearance you are after. The brilliant polish is an after effect done by buffing the new plating.
Here a simple hand polishing with simichrome or similar will bring
up that high shine with little work