doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Incomplete Rib Solder

Keith told me this story some time ago. The rust blueing process cannot cause rib separation. How do you figure he caused your rib to come loose? The only thing I can think of is water getting inside the cavity, turning to steam, but for that to happen there has to be a way for water to get in and no way for steam to get out.

I have had Keith do a lot of work for me. He is courteous, prompt, and reasonable. He is a man of many talents so he doesn't send stuff all over the country like some other guys, at your expense plus markup. The only issue I have ever had with Keith is he neglected to dress the muzzles on a set of Greener bbls he browned for me, and they needed it; and I have heard from another customer that Keith does not neutralize with alkaline solution after browning, just water. Thus if you don't oil your bbls well sometimes they continue to rust. But I can't say I have had this experience and I have had him do over a dozen barrel browning jobs for me.

Keith is a chemical engineer so I very much doubt he "used acid flux", other than for tinning. I'll ask him next time I see him.

Keith runs his business and I run mine. No relationship other than arm's length. And I send stuff to other guys as well.

Chuck,
My experience has been that anything properly soldered will not come apart. This includes but is not limited to guns only. To my mind, if you've got a gap, you probably don't have two well tinned surfaces. You could have, but it's a Catch-22 situation, you can't really know without removing something to have a look.
Jim

Jim,
Thanks. That was my take on it also. I haven't had to deal with a loose rib, just projects requiring laying a rib on pristine barrels.

Is a loose rib just the top being loose or is it the end of the barrels moving too.

I've had Andys Custom Shop re-lay ribs on several of my shotguns to make them whole again. The first job was to repair the screw up of another "gunsmith" who reblued the barrels of one of my O/U clays guns. The problem was that the first guy either didn't notice that the barrels were soft soldered or he didn't care. I'm not sure which was the case but that was a lesson I didn't really want to have to afford at the time. The other "big" job was when Andy rebuilt/restored my 21 which had the ribs patched long before I bought the gun. That had a fair amount of pitting and rust under the ribs where the old repair was.

After seeing the issues with my shotguns that good gunsmiths have sorted out I'm of the opinion that it's money well spent to have only good people work on my guns. I may have to save to have the work done but in the end for me at least it's more economical to not have to worry if the job was done right the first time.

I may still have some photos of the 21 barrels posted on the hunt 101 site that show the pitting and rust but it's been months since I've actually been on there so I'm not sure.

Parris George

Parris,
The problem has always been finding the "good ones". This bbs has made that much easier.

Chuck:

You are so right. One of the good things with this "community" is that the knowlege base tends to be not only deep but also broad. If for example one of us wanted to know about an obscure maker chances are very good that at least one but more likely several would have good information on the subject.

It also comes in useful for finding out who the sharks are all the way around.

Parris

A good friend of mine had the rib on a Fox relaid by Kearcher. If he thought he got it back on straight, he shouldn't have a drivers license. From this and other examples of his work that I've seen, I would never recommend him.