doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Uh, Oh, this ain’t good….Parker Repro

A friend of mine was hunting pheasants in the Dakotas this week and his Parker Reproduction fell apart! I have only seen this photo but looks to me like one heck of a poor job of soldering. I would have thought it would be brazed. And the locking lug isn’t even dovetailed into the barrels but more of a partial saddle jointing. What a piece of crap.

Suggestions for a qualified gunsmith to repair?

That is a common way of putting barrels together I had a Boswell come apart like that

Clean it up and resolder it.

Should have been brazed.

Clean it up and "re-silver braze" it. You can see from the photo the original braze was not done well and the coverage was not complete.

This is a good point to inform the novice that the thinner the joint the stronger with brazing and soldering. For silver brazing a clearing of 2-3 thousands of an inch between the lump and the barrels prior to brazing is the goal.

In this particular barrel, notice that there is a pin that aligns/holds the lump in position, much attention needs to be focused upon this detail of alignment before brazing. The craftsman repairing this lump is advised to use a machinist scraper to clean the surfaces of all old braze.

A silver braze with a flow temp of about 1275 degrees F works well for this work.

This is the typical way all Parker barrel lugs are attached, not just Parker Reproductions. The pin you see is actually a screw which comes through the top short rib into the lug for securement during the brazing process of the lugs. Take a look at any Parker and you can see the outline of this screw on the short top rib which is matted over when the rib is matted.

This is one single failure, and it doesn't automatically mean that all Parker reproduction or original Parker barrels are a piece of crap! This is just one failure on one set of barrels, it's unfortunate, but these things can happen & I wish the owner the best for getting these repaired.

Dogon;

Thank you for explaining the screw/pin feature developed by Parker Bros. of holding the lump in place for brazing. I suspect the fitting of the screw/pin to the lump was faulty, not drawing the lump and barrel close together and thus the braze joint did not have the strength it should have had. Thank you also for upholding this ancient "dove tail" method of barrel making which has been used on millions of British shotgun barrels for a 150 years. They were first brazed together in coal-fired blacksmiths forges prior to modern gas torch systems. Even today these old barrels (think damascus pattern welded barrels and old steel barrels) are still being used in day to day shooting that had their lumps brazed to the barrels in a coal-fired forge over in the corner of the barrel shop.

Some gunmakers of today such as the Turks use a rolled pin to hold the barrel tubes securely to the mono-bloc prior to solf-soldering the barrel tubes to the mono-bloc. It seems to work OK. I also suspect that the Turks are using modern glues in lieu of solf-solder as well.

Would an industrial/aircraft-grade adhesive/bonding agent not work on this? Some of that stuff is incredibly strong. Experts on this can let us know.
JR

John;

I am convinced that the similar adhesive that is being used to "glue" carbide tips to circular saw blades would work with flying colors.

Makes me wonder if ribs and barrels could be mated the same way.