Here's a damaged factory rear sight dovetail made to disappear on a customized Savage 3B .22
No welding, just simple tools and techniques.






I cut the filler block a bit small for the dovetail here. But left it plenty high enough. Initial hammering it into shape peened it into the dovetail. Then the excess was coarse filed away before the final peening was done to lock it tightly in place.
That small divot on one edge was left there, slightly deepened and dovetailed with chisels. The swaging process expands the filler block into that area to take care of it.
That's a usable technique when filling an odd shaped area. Push the filler plug around to fill the void instead of trying to make a plug to fit the odd shape of the void to begin with.



Filler expanded and peened solidly in place. Most of the excess filed off. Some left in place for final swaging.



Final swaging into place and rough shape before filing to shape and polishing. This is done with rapid hammer taps and not heavy blows of the hammer. Nothing is distorted on the bbl.
I use a 2oz ball peen hammer, my 'do everything' bench hammer for the work using a few different size flat nose punches.
Sometimes I use a slightly heavier hammer for the first few strikes to 'set' a piece into place.


Finish filed and I think about a 220polish to the area. The rest of the bbl was later polished, some engraving done and the bbl rust blued.


Welding was always hit and miss. Great when it worked, miserable when it didn't.
This is predictable. Blues over and blends in. I use it for screw holes, dovetails, heavy pits, ect.
Inlaying steel into steel is really not that difficult and that is what is done when filling heavy pit marks , dents, ect.
Cut out the bad area and dovetail the edges just like you would if inlaying gold or silver. Then inlay your piece of steel into the pocket.
You must be more careful in the fit of the inlay piece when it's steel than gold or silver.
Plus you must be extra careful when punching in down to swage it into place you absolutely don't hit the base metal,,just the plug. It takes a lot more force to swage the steel into place than gold or silver. Any misplaced hits onto the base metal will leave you with a lot of extra repairs to do along with the one you set out to accomplish!