One of the strangest ones I've had was a set of LCS bbls that had obviously been reblued before and needed to be redone again. The ribs were loose in several spots so I decided to strip them and start over.
Just when I got them hot enough to start pulling the ribs free,,smoke started billowing from in between the ribs. I just kept going and stripped the ribs off with the smoke alarms going and the place filled with what smelled like wood smoke.
Somehow, someone in the past had redone the ribs and had used spacers made of wood instead of the metal ones originally used.
From the look what was left of them, they appeared to be nothing more than pieces of tongue depressors stacked together to the right thickness in several places. Not unlike many of the metal spacers that are thin pieces stacked & soldered together.
All I can figure is they must have done the final soldering up job with an electric soldering iron to avoid setting the wooden spacers ablaze. My torch wasn't so kind to them.
I do use a general purpose electric soldering gun to tin the ribs and most of the length of the tubes. It won't do the last/heaviest portion of the tubes. But it does a quick clean tinning job of the rest of it though. So with a bigger unit, I'd guess the whole job is possible.
You never know what you're going to find in there....
