I'm not a gunsmith but I do some metalwork. I had to heat my Win.94 barrel red hot to remove the mangled front sight ramp. What kind of steel is used in gun barrels? Is it OK to hard solder on a new ramp or does some heat treatment need to take place after the barrel end has been so hot? Thanks, James

The types of steel varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and I have no idea what alloy winchester has or has used. You should have no problem re-soldering on a new front sight as long as the barrel is ok to begin with. If the bore had becomes scaled (flaked) from the heat you mention......that part of the barrel is damaged beyond repair. If not, don't worry about it. A lot of manucafturers used high temp silver solder for attaching various components and that requires alot of heat to soften, brownells sell a low temp silver solder that works very well. I have been using it for many years and have yet had a joint fail.
As to "heat treat" on barrels, very few companies actually harden their barrels...the only one I can think of off the bat is Glock......most of the heat treating done to barrels is simply stress relieving the unit and not hardening the steel.
Hope this helps.

If you had that bore red hot w/o taking precautions to prevent it from scaling, may as well not worry about putting a front sight back on it. There are several ways to protect the bore when using high temp silver solder, they have to be used anytime you get the steel above 450°F, Win's are prone to scaling. Also, if the whole bbl wasn't heated evenly, chances are it warped too, if the whole bbl was heated, it needs to be re-tempered as well to bring it back into spec.

Looks like scale is the problem here. You should be able to see it or feel it when you run a cleaning rod with a mop or patch on it thru the barrel. Sure hope you didn't bugger it up.

There are anti-scale mixtures that need applied when you go over certain temps. I've used Brownell's lo temp silver solder with good results. They make a strip solder that you can cut to the shape of the bottom of the sight, just clamp it and heat. To keep the bluing from getting solder on it use the chalk Brownells' sells for that purpose.

How noticable is this scaling? The rifling is very crisp and any particles I see are as fine as dust on a countertop. This is a 23 inch barrel so I'm thinking it would still make a good 16 inch Trapper barrel as only the first 4 inches were hot. Is the Hi Force 44 solder from Brownell's OK? It flows at 475 Far. Thanks, James

The Hi Force sounds like what I have, I don't know the branded name but it's from Brownell's. It's a lot easier to work with than 95/5 plumbing solder but plumbing solder will hold quite well too if you make the joint properly but it does require using more heat, I only use it for non-barrel applications.

The fine dust you see is scale. The older the bore and the hotter it got, the thicker and more abundant the scale will become. If you only got some that looks to be about the same consistency as baby powder, chances are you're okay as long as you didn't warp the barrel. The only issue you may have is running cast bullets through it until you get the bore slicked back up again. If it warped and does not hit where it should but still groups good, you can usually bend it back without too much problem, little bit at a time and easy does it.

Usually when you get a bore hot enough to turn the silver braze (high temp solder) loose, the scaling is excessive and destroys the bore. Hopefully you got lucky!

Thanks for the information! Sometimes I learn the hard way but at least I still try to learn!!! I'll chuck the barrel in the lathe for a start and try to determine if there's warpage. Thanks again, James

FYI, chances are the outside is not symetrical with the bore, chucking it in the lathe may be a waste of time unless you pilot it off the chamber and the muzzle provided you have a tailstock with an allignment indicator built into it.

If you have it off the receiver, I'd simply check it for straitness by looking through it, if you catch the light on several different points in the bore, you'll see it shadow if it's warped.

If it's still on the receiver, put an inspection mirror into the chamber and get the light into the bore that way and check in the same manner.

If it looks okay, see what it does for grouping but don't jump to conclusions, try several different loads and bullets before you make a determination as to the level of accuracy.

I checked the barrel with your light method. My eyes are not trained for this but I saw even swirls of light without a shadow. I'll put it back together and check for accuracy! You're right, the barrel OD is not concentric with the bore. This brings me to another question; I've seen barrels that were shortened and the bore is way off center. Do you true the barrel with chamber and muzzle between centers so you can cut a proper crown on it? Just curious, James

I made my own crowning tool that pilots off the bore so there's never an allignment issue.

Yes, most all bores are off center to some extent and just because the bore is not symetrical to the OD doesn't mean it can't shoot good. I had a Stevens single shot .30-30 that was way off center yet it was more than capable of printing excellent groups at 100yds. It's the nature of the beast, actually the deep hole drill - as it transverses the bar stock, it'll tend to wander a little based on the variations within the stock itself. Depending on the mfg's standards as to what they allow for tolerances on the bore axis variation. Most major mfg's employ "barrel straiteners", those people with a good eye and feel for job stand there all day bending finished barrels to make them strait. Small shops and custom builders hold their tolerances extremely tight. The muzzle loader barrels I deal in come from a one-man shop and are held to 0.010" maximum tolerance, anything over that and they are culled. To put this in perspective, the high-volume barrel makers generally allow 0.030" ±0.010 tolerance "after straitening".

I've tweeked several barrels to get them tuned in better, very common on shotguns. As long as the last 3" or so if the bore is fairly strait, you won't have a problem even if the bore is not strait all the way through. You have an uncorrectable problem when you get a clear line of demarcation at a bent or warped spot. This is usually what happens when you heat a bore like you did so consider youself very lucky this time. (Generally that type of work is done using a forge or brazing oven where heat is applied evenly over the entire barrel)

It really does not matter if the bore is on center or not. Chuck the muzzle up in the lathe, use wedges on the spindle to keep the outside end from flopping around, and cut a recess crown at 90 degrees to the bore. The crown will be accurate, no matter how off center the bore may be.

Just a thought, but you don't really have to solder a new ramp on it. Mill a dovetail in the bbl and get the proper new hgt sight. Rifle bbls are not hard, clean it recrown it and see if it still groups if not sounds like that trapper is all that much closer to being a reality.