Welding a rifle barrel

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bk0331

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Can you lay a bead of weld on a rifle barrel without hurting the integrity of the barrel? Say about a 2 inch x 1/2 bead. Especially if you did it a bit at a time. Thanks.
 
If it's a .22 RF barrel?
Maybe.

Anything else?
No way!!!!!

Centerfire barrels are high grade steel, and stress relieved after boring and rifling.
Ark welding a 2" bead on one would surely ruin the accuracy, if not create hard spots and cause it to blow up.

rc
 
you might be alright with stringer welds of tig welding with an expert doing it but i would only do it to tack on a front sight base or maybe a bayonet mount or something near the chamber seems like suicide
 
AND the heat of welding will cause scale to form in the bore as you work.

But, other than all that, it should work fine.

??
 
This was in regard to a rifle being auctioned on GB. The rear sight had been ground off the barrel and left an ugly slash. I was wondering how it might be fixed. At this point the piece has been bid up higher than I think it is worth anyway. So...thanks to all for your input.
 
Um wow.
I would not even want to try to fire that gun.

WOW :what: :banghead:
Why would any one do that to a gun. You can get a new barrel an sell the old one.

Just WOW :banghead:
 
Good Lord!

I guess that's one way to use your old set of low scope rings with a 50mm scope!

Never thought of taking an angle-grinder to a rifle barrel to get scope clearance! :eek:

BTW: That barrel is toast, and there is nothing you can do about it!

rc
 
To strictly address the welding question, you could probably get away with it if you submerged the barrel to the weld level in a pan of water and draped a wet towel over any exposed area not to be welded, and made small (like 1/4") welds with time between to wick the heat away. Sort of like welding bolt handles, but more carefully...

That said, that particular rifle isn't worth the welding rod to try it.
 
LOL That barrel is junk. If you wanted a wall hanger may want to fix it for $10.00. Yep get some JB Weld to build it back up then sand down and take out the Black Krylon. LOL i would pass it up. Not worth it. First your looking at a full barrel replacement. Now lets take a look at the Stock that is pretty much as toast. Now maybe clean up the rest of the rust and add up what you just spent to fix a pump 30-06.
 
I wouldn't fire that rifle if my life depended on it. A tragedy just waiting to happen. Are you sure it wasn't placed on bid from the Taliban, they have vowed to kill as many American as they could.
 
rem

some one was a real idiot.the rear sight is not ground off the dovetail is stil there you just knock it out.that was ground to let a scope lens clear the barrel.the stock can be fixed but the barrel needs replacing,about a $100 from numrich.:rolleyes::uhoh:
 
fellas, Let me say I dont think what you see there makes the gun dangerous to shoot. That grind job happends to be on a relatively thick part of the barrel when considering what Ultra Light Arms does to barrel diameters to make light pencil wieght barreled guns in all the hot calibers! I bet if you measured the cut's depth, doubled it and turned the barrel to that new diameter in a lathe, you would still be thicker than some of the pencil wieghts floating around out there. As far as welding on a barrel, low heat, short passes of mig or tig with time for air cooling between short passes should not pose a problem. If you have ever silver soldered sights on a barrel (turning it orange with heat) you would see the most important part of the job in keeping the barrel soft is passive air cooling. Quenching a weld will raise the carbon, making very hard areas at the weld sight. THAT would be dangerous and ripe for a pressure crack. Granted, the grind looks ugly but not that terribly deep at that particular part of the barrel. If the bore is good, and my guess is good on the diameter, I would just re-taper turn the barrel to clear the grind and consider it a ultra light, featherweight...whatever.
 
This rifle was more than likely shot allot after this modification was done. If it didn't blow up after the first box of shells it is more than likely not going to blow up on the next 10 boxes. There is ugly and then there is a pipe bomb. This is just the case of some dumb donkey not wanting to spend the money or time to get the right mounts.
Jb weld it, sand to contour and painted it. This would still make a good truck gun, not really worth rebuilding.
 
Had a Maadi AK years back that had a muzzle nut welded to it so you couldn't attatch anything to it. That gun shot like a shotgun! Patterns.......
 
FWIW, I agree with the "no shoot" folks. That grinding is a bit too deep and too close to the chamber to mess around with the pressures involved.

Jim
 
I'm with xtrigger - the barrel would be safe to shoot. I can imagine that it warped a bit from the removed metal though but not necessarily. I would not hesitiate to weld it and reprofile it except for welding on one side like that you very likely will cause it to bend or warp. A good preheat would minimize or elimate that problem. Scale is basically rust - iron combined with oxygen. If you prevent oxygen from reaching the hot metal, there is no scale. When I have welded on barrels in the past, I have used a wood dowel in the bore which consumes the oxygen as it burns or by flowing N2 or another inert gas through the bore.
 
DO NOT weld if you want to fire that gun again. Welding distorts the chemical properties of the metal and also, check on the thermo-dynamics on steel. We can agree that heating makes things expand correct? and cooling makes things contract correct? Well after you heat steel like that it will shrink back yes, but it shrinks back smaller then the original size, thus deforming and warping anything within the heat affected zone (the colored area).
 
Look at the rest of the gun. Poor condition. With all the deals out there, why would anyone want that one? Maybe for parts, but not at that price.
 
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